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Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

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141–150 of 316 posts

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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people aren’t saying “aks” to make a public statement against you for whatever reason. they’re saying it because that’s how they learned to speak and the dialect of speakers who they were surrounded with. yeah, people code switch, but i have come across many many people who just say things differently from the majority pronunciation. they’re not misunderstood and they can communicate just fine (see nucular vs nuclear…

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Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#142

British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)

Is it the same reason as Worcestershire mapped to "wooster" ?

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#143

I see this at my $megagorp job. The top brass don't do that much written communication, but when they do they are absolutely shooting from the hip. It's not as bad as Epstein but it's a strong "I've already started reading the next email while I'm typing this one" vibes. FWIW I don't have a problem with it at all. As the article mentioned there's an aspect of power politics (I'm important enough not to have to worry…

>capitalisation is just unimportant. Signing off emails with "best wishes" is not a good use of anyone's 500 milliseconds

Yet I'm on Twitter reading "Prison for attempted murderer enablers like this clown" by the world's richest man who is tweeting all day. My guess is that it has just become a way of status signalling more than anything else.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this isn't wrong but spelling and grammar still isn't a good indicator for expertise, intelligence or anything like that even in an academic context Mainly: 1. Dyslexia doesn't make you dump, just likely to misspell and a less likely to notice your misspelling. 2. When speaking about neurodivergence people mainly think about Autism or ADHD but sometimes just mean that your brain thinks in very different patters, this…

I think the grammar/spelling is just one (perhaps low-signal) sign. But a lot of these people really are not that intelligent. And not just the GlobalElite™. Think of the guy who owns the local car dealership or owns 20 laundromats in the surrounding 3 counties. These guys are not geniuses, either. They just happen to own things that make them rich. I worked with a tech founder at one point in my life, and I once hap…

Your GPA isn't necessarily a measure of your intelligence. I graduated with a 2.01 GPA from college, because I spent most of my time learning about technology and things that interested me, and doing the bare minimum to pass my classes.

But my diploma still says "UC Berkeley" on it, just like the guys with the 3.9 GPA. And when I hang out with PhD friends' PhD friends, they just assume I'm a PhD too.

So what I'm saying is that sometimes smart people don't put a lot of effort into school.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#145

British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)

Is it the same reason as Worcestershire mapped to "wooster" ?

Plymouth -> plee-mooth not ply-mouth

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#146
post #93

British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)

Here in Toronto area city of Vaughan pronounced as (/vɔːn/ or /vɑːn/) like in "dawn" or "gone" Imaging me fresh from USSR asking someone how do I get to ... and getting blank stare

Typical in Toronto - remember there’s only one T in “Toronto”

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#147
post #12

This could be read as a condemnation of the text input interfaces we've designed; the users are busy and have little choice. Typing on a phone still is awful: * Very time-consuming, especially for edits/corrections * Lacks functionality (where is undo? the right/left arrow keys?) and other functionality is very poor (mouse/pointer control) * Frustrating! * Consumes attention: I can type on a full keyboard while looki…

I'd agree UIs are a sh*tshow but just saying this misses the wide variety of things that can put under "language is usage". Of course, the article itself misses the way the reveals texts between current elites are more equivalent to the grunts of cigar smoking old boys in clubs than to formal business communication. And that's just scratching the surface of the implication of informal business and other language. "Is it laziness or power signaling?" - both in complex layers.

As a side note, I grew up in the era of typewriters and cursive and that "interface" was utterly miserable - composing at the typewriter was considered bad, a fair portion of people couldn't type and typists would/could be hired for various tasks. I was vastly heartened when PCs with word processors became available at the college computer center senior. I think text processing interfaces reach their apex around 2000s (fusing power and usability) but when something gets to certain optimality, it can only go down and that where phones are.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#148
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WELL, THE CAPITAL LETTER FORMS WERE THE ORIGINAL ONES, THEN LOWERCASE ONES WERE CREATED BECAUSE THEY WERE FASTER FOR THE MONKS TO WRITE WHO WERE COPYING BOOKS. SOURCE: ROMAN RUINS. WE'RE NOT MONKS SO DEF COMPLETELY OBSOLETE. SO IF YOU WANT TO THROW OUT THE CAPITALIZATION RULES ENTIRELY, DO IT RIGHT AND USE ALL CAPS. THIS WOULD DEFINITELY MAKE IDEAS EASIER TO TRANSMIT AND RECEIVE.

my point wasn't about using the "original rules", on the contrary it was about discarding uneeded ones. totally missed the point, but hey thanks for your contribution.

I’m not sure why you’re using commas and double quotes and dots, they’re so unneeded!

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#149
post #52

I think a more likely reason, that for some reason, a lot of people don't want to talk about, is that these "Global Elite" aren't really that smart, creative, or articulate. That they've gotten to where they are despite, not because of their communication skills. They're not being "typical unconventional / quirky entrepreneurs." They're simply C students who knew the right people.

There's some of that but I remember 15 years ago this investor in our startup emailed the founder and misspelled the name of the startup that they had just pumped a significant amount of money into :-) The founders said it was very 'senior' of him and laughed about it. But it's also kind of indicative of seniority because senior people aren't wasting time looking up the correct spelling of a company name - they get t…

...is it possible to do typosquatting on investment targets?

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#150
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_... Ignorance of why something exists is not a good enough reason to destroy it.

Yes... though I think Chesterton's fence definitely belongs in the "technically correct advice that actually does more harm than good" bucket, like "premature optimisation", "if it works don't fix it", the Unix philosophy and so on. This doesn't apply to capitalisation, but generally especially in computing if there's something that looks useless you should remove it. If it breaks the fault lies with whomever left so…

> If it breaks the fault lies with whomever left something useless there without a note to explain it.

The client won’t care, it’s your company who broke their system.

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