Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

blogs.hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 334 posts

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#211

Post by adavies42 »

einhverfr wrote: post #114
bane wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Whom" is also almost impossibly archaic and no longer considered part of modern English (having almost completely fallen out of usage around the start of the 20th century). It survives almost entirely in discussions of when to use it and almost never appears in modern writing except as a demonstration of what linguists call a "prestige form". "To whom did you give it?" vs. "Who did you give it to?" the latter is mor…

I would say "whom" today is reserved for formulaic usage. In 1912, Edward Sapir ("Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech") noted the death of "whom." The example he gave was "Whom did you see yesterday" vs "Who did you see yesterday?" Granted there are some cool things you can do with who/whom, like: 'Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome tae yer gory bed, Or tae victorie.…

There's an Allan Sherman song ("When I Was a Lad") where one of the rhymes depends on who/whom:

I learned who was going out with whom

And who had the keys to the powder room

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#212

Post by nollidge »

FreebytesSector wrote: post #127
nollidge wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But grammar is just a set of arbitrary rules that some person or group of people decided were correct. That's like saying the evolutionary tree of life is just a set of arbitrary rules someone came up with. It's not, it's a description of an existing evolved system. Grammar wasn't handed down from on high by an authority, it's an evolved, undirected cultural artifact. There were definitely influential actors, like…

Natural selection was not a conscious choice. There have been many choices in grammar that have been decided almost arbitrarily by higher authorities. Sure, many of these choices may have been based on their own experiences, but they were not necessarily the best choices. They were decided by a small group of individuals, but again, the choice was not strictly a natural selection of grammar rules. Language more often…

> There have been many choices in grammar that have been decided almost arbitrarily by higher authorities

Just because somebody makes a decree about grammar doesn't mean it'll be widely accepted, any more than an organism obtaining a genetic mutation means it'll become spread throughout the population in subsequent generations.

My point is just that there wasn't any overarching plan. People design their own use of it, but whether or not that becomes popular enough to be considered "the rule" is analogous to natural selection - messy, convoluted, frequently arbitrary, but good enough.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#213

Post by kwiens »

crazygringo wrote: post #84

As long as it's a reasonable test, you can argue its merits. But on a site of mine, I've gotten so many e-mails complaining that I say "the data is" instead of "the data are", or arguing that either "what year were you born in" or "in what year were you born" or "what year were you born" are variously wrong, and only one is right (but they all seem to disagree on which one). Beyond a certain point necessary for clear…

The test covers a variety of topics, and you don't need to get anywhere close to a perfect score. And it really covers the basics: misspellings, usage of to vs two, etc. This is about basic communication, not pedantry.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#214

Post by adavies42 »

einhverfr wrote: post #114
bane wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Whom" is also almost impossibly archaic and no longer considered part of modern English (having almost completely fallen out of usage around the start of the 20th century). It survives almost entirely in discussions of when to use it and almost never appears in modern writing except as a demonstration of what linguists call a "prestige form". "To whom did you give it?" vs. "Who did you give it to?" the latter is mor…

I would say "whom" today is reserved for formulaic usage. In 1912, Edward Sapir ("Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech") noted the death of "whom." The example he gave was "Whom did you see yesterday" vs "Who did you see yesterday?" Granted there are some cool things you can do with who/whom, like: 'Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome tae yer gory bed, Or tae victorie.…

There's also Lenin's famous line "Who? Whom?", which is a lot harder to translate without a "whom" available....

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#215

Post by tomjen3 »

RobAley wrote: post #70
amackera wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand a bit on this? I've read his Cathedral and Bazaar book, and quite enjoyed it. I didn't realize there was a whole context that I should be aware of.

For some, it's his views on homaphobia[1], and his views on race[2]. For others, it's his lack of actually doing anything useful recently. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157324 [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3826846 The link in [2] is dead, it previously linked to http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4270

Also if you go back an read his early stuff during the Bush administration, you can add hater of muslims to the list as well.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#216

Post by adavies42 »

bane wrote: post #132
ianterrell wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Really? I use whom all the time, and most of my friends do as well. Granted, a) we're all snobs, and b) we don't use it in every case we should, but we still use it. Maybe we're part of this little post 2000 resurgence: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=whom&year_s...

So ask yourself the question, why not "thee", "thou" and "thy" (and relevant possessive forms)? I'm not saying "whom" is wrong only that it is archaic. Reviving just that word seems rather capricious and arbitrary no?

they have their place. i saw a lovely translation recently of a french request to "tutoyer" (address in the familiar) as "i must be thee to thou".

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#217

Post by adavies42 »

einhverfr wrote: post #29
espinchi wrote: post #7

I do the same: unstructured e-mails, poor grammar and, in general, bad writing style make me reject applicants instantaneously. However, I wonder if I'm letting good candidates go just because of my grammar nazism. How do you (folks in HN with more experience at hiring) feel about this?

In my view the ability to structure communications is important. I don't think that's the same as being a grammar nazi. For example if you have a zero tolerance policy for it's vs its, or for commas making things confusing, the framers of the US Constitution would fail the test. Not only is 'it's' is used as a possessive but try to parse this: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United State…

> For example if you have a zero tolerance policy for it's vs its, or for commas making things confusing, the framers of the US Constitution would fail the test.

that's a question of knowing something about history. i wouldn't hire anyone with perfect grammar and style who was too dim to know that both are subject to change over time.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#218

Post by excuse-me »

StavrosK wrote: post #60
amackera wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand a bit on this? I've read his Cathedral and Bazaar book, and quite enjoyed it. I didn't realize there was a whole context that I should be aware of.

I would also like this explained. I know very little about who ESR is.

ESR was an evil prophet of the dark god Cthullu.

Reading sendmail configs out-loud are believed to summon the evil one and bring about his reign of terror.

So fetchmail is the equivalent of an evil prayer wheel

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#219

Post by adavies42 »

ricardonunez wrote: post #176

My mother thong is Spanish, I also know English, Portuguese and some Italian. I'm not a good in either language. In the last few years I put a lot of time in getting better at English. By reading that post and some comments you will assume I don't read, I'm lazy, slow learner, sloppy and unmotivated. Proper grammar is important, but I'll not make it a priority while looking for talent.

no, just illiterate. the original author and the commenters here all made allowances for non-native speakers of english, which apparently you couldn't be bothered to read....

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#220

Post by excuse-me »

exDM69 wrote: post #47

This practically excludes everyone who doesn't speak English as their native language. Depending on what business he's into this can be a serious handicap for recruitment.

No he says specifically that this doesn't apply to ESL or dyslexics.

As a writer he is objecting to hiring people who don't care enough about writing to use grammar correctly and he believes that this also strongly correlates with being a good programmer.

Post reply on HN