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Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

standard.co.uk

81–90 of 109 posts

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to know the difference between me having money to survive and being jobless will be a typo.

I cannot express how little sympathy I have for this tale of woe.

That's kind of the problem - lack of sympathy.

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot express how little sympathy I have for this tale of woe.

That's kind of the problem - lack of sympathy.

That's kind of the problem... hiring managers don't hire people because they feel sorry for them. They hire people because they think those people will be good at doing the work the manager needs to have done.

After working with you side by side for a few weeks, the manager may, in all likelihood, genuinely feel sympathy for a problem you may have (though apostrophe use likely doesn't fall into that category). But that will have been because you earned it by being a colleague.

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#84
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, your keystrokes were streamed to the hiring manager as you typed? Writing is not real-time communication, take the time to review it before you send it. I corrected a few typos while writing this comment.

Mistakes can happen even after proofreading.

And if a hiring manager wants to evaluate your proofreading ability and attention to detail, more power to them.

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#85
post #8

Its just simpler to not worry about the apostrophes. Theyre unnecessary for understanding what a sentence is saying. Im confident that future English will be slightly superior once it has eliminated the apostrophe.

Anecdotally I found there is a high correlation between one’s ability to write correct English and one’s ability to write correct code. If I’m in the hiring side and I see a “its” vs “it’s” mistake it counts against you. A higher correlation is with consistency in spacing. The worst coders I met are the one who keep changing the rules about how many spaces they leave after commas and brackets... within the same file.

I think you're on to something. I'd bet it is correlated with a person's conscientiousness score. The higher score would both mean less spelling mistakes and tidier code.

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I found there is a high correlation between one’s ability to write correct English and one’s ability to write correct code. If I’m in the hiring side and I see a “its” vs “it’s” mistake it counts against you. A higher correlation is with consistency in spacing. The worst coders I met are the one who keep changing the rules about how many spaces they leave after commas and brackets... within the same file.

Glad to know the difference between me having money to survive and being jobless will be a typo.

A typo such as misspelling "principal".

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#88
post #8

Its just simpler to not worry about the apostrophes. Theyre unnecessary for understanding what a sentence is saying. Im confident that future English will be slightly superior once it has eliminated the apostrophe.

Anecdotally I found there is a high correlation between one’s ability to write correct English and one’s ability to write correct code. If I’m in the hiring side and I see a “its” vs “it’s” mistake it counts against you. A higher correlation is with consistency in spacing. The worst coders I met are the one who keep changing the rules about how many spaces they leave after commas and brackets... within the same file.

I'm visually impaired, among other things. I make some of my money doing freelance writing and I also know a little HTML and CSS.

I refer to editing my own writing as "cleaning" it, an expression borrowed from programming.

It's a pain in the ass for me because of my issues, but the computer or human reader equally don't care. So I just work at it and layer in extra steps.

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#89
post #73
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". > Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. How would you type "ch"?

tsch or dsch

[deleted]

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#90
post #32
post #8

Its just simpler to not worry about the apostrophes. Theyre unnecessary for understanding what a sentence is saying. Im confident that future English will be slightly superior once it has eliminated the apostrophe.

Clarity or confusion? George Bernard Shaw back in 1900 promoted the same idea and his writing was full of its (the abbreviation) and Ives and cant. It still hasn't happened for good reason and most people follow the rules. With some expressions, those who don't, against the grain, force their readers to double check the parsing. The cost may be only a millisecond or two but it is nevertheless a tiny distraction incur…

> With some expressions, those who don't, against the grain, force their readers to double check the parsing.

Speaking of clarity vs confusion, and forcing readers to double check parsing! Muphry strikes again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

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