Discussion on:

Why trying to sound smarter can make you seem dumb

If the audience can fully understand you, then you have communicated effectively. Whatever style you use should be catered to the audience as the end all and be all of communication. Fretting over the order, type and even spelling of words used is wasted effort and should be secondary objective of writing at best. Spelling and word usage is more a measure of familiarity and conformity to a culture than it is a measure of intelligence. The most intelligent people I have ever met in the practical matters of life and engineering are not great writers or spellers.

If your audience is not well read, it is better to use small words. If they are well read, then use big words, as long as they are more efficient or precise. Since the general population of the world, take pride in their ignorance, so then if you are writing something for broad appeal, use dumb lazy words. If you are writing something on the internet which has on average a slightly more well read population, then you can get away with using more meaningful words. If you are targeting doctorates, then use the most accurate words that have to do with their profession.

All writing should be for the audience, not your fascination on making yourself look smart or resolving approval issues from second grade fascism instructor.

If the pun is the lowest form of wit,
does that mean pundits are the lowest form of journalist?

I agree, very well said.

Mostly well said, especially about throwing in $10 words willy-nilly. Unfortunately, Nustada has fallen prey to a common misconception started by well-meaning elementary school teachers decades ago, that spelling and grammar are irrelevant. Language communicates ideas only as well as it is understood, and understanding any code such as English is based on undertanding the rules for that code. Mistakes (violations of the rules) decrease intelligibility and weaken the writer's carefully crafted prose.

I agree completely. I work in a hardware and software tech engineering environment with a great group of people. They are variously Costa Rican,Chinese, Korean, Indian AND Pakistani, from the Dominican Republic, Russian, Italian, Spanish (and a couple of Americans), all using English in written and verbal communications. English, improperly spoken and written is tantamount to disaster, much as would be improper syntax, or sloppy C++ or Java. or worse yet, poorly written assembly or microcode. So, yes, spelling and/or grammar are still important in communicating a clear message or instruction.

I mostly agree with with you and Toni. It's pure laziness and incompetence on the part of teachers who probably failed to learn grammar, and school districts who have dismissed those standards in favor of contemporary arts and such.

You bring my mind to my own errors, such as inappropriate use of ellipses.I'll try to repent.

I have forgotten many of the rules of grammar but I still recognize the glaring errors heard in modern news reports.

I worked in broadcasting many years ago and I know from the many errors I made -- unknowingly -- I was referred to the NBC Standard Pronunciation Guide. Studying that four - inch thick book was both educational and punitive.

For example:

If your audience understands you, then you've communicated effectively; and to do so, cater your writing to the specific audience you're addressing. Remember that excessive concern for exact grammar and spelling alone will not ensure clarity. [I'd include your thoughts regarding the tendency of many intellectually accomplished people to use poor grammar and spelling as a postscript. Although it is an insightful observation, it's tangential to the theme of your post].

Accommodate your vocabulary to your audience. Jargon and uncommon words that are well-suited to literate readers may be gibberish to others. Online, one can reasonably expect a moderately educated audience that will benefit from words that expresses a finer shade of meaning than small and simple vocabulary. Similarly, an audience of professionals will benefit from industry-specific jargon and more complex language.

In short: know your audience, and target your writing specifically to them.

While understanding is necessary for communication, it is not sufficient for communication to be effective. For it to be effective, people must also accept what you have to say.

I disagree that effort to use proper grammar and spelling is wasted. Poor spelling and improper grammar convey that you are either uneducated or were not willing to expend the effort to communicate well. Either case provides cause to discount what a person has to say.

Precisely my point. Also, if you are imprecise in your day to day communications, a grammatical miscue or spelling error in a text string will bring to question the value of a piece of software. If, for instance, you are installing or even utilizing an application that has spelling errors or whose instructions were not written clearly in the various applets, does that not set off a silent alarm? When I see that in an app, Windows or UNIX command line, I wonder, 'if they don't care enough to keep this 'visible' stuff clean, how good is the underlying code you DON'T see?

But... if you don't challange the audience to learn something they don't understand, pretty soon you will be just grunting and pointing... lol

(I knew we'd agree on SOMETHING, eventually!)

First year college English professor said to me "Mr. Bundy you don't write worth a damn." Why? Because I used big words and needlessly complex sentence structure.

ADDENDUM - I was listening to NPR this morning and one of the features was about SAT scores. English (writing/reading comprehension) has declined -

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904491704576571060049856724.html

Your first year college English professor was a moron...

of my favorite professors. Hard as nails and kinda scary too!

My father, who was brilliant, gave me the same lesson when I was young and learning English (I'd been raised in Japan while he was doing work in China and Vietnam). I was learning as swiftly as I could, and was fascinated with the so-called $10 words. My father was normally hard as nails and kinda scary too, but this particular day he was more kind. One day after I'd said something to him with five five-syllable words in one sentence, he gently asked me "Do you know what language is for?" After my just looking at him for a moment because this was obviously a trick question, he added "It's for _communication_." That was enough to very clearly make his point and I've remembered it for thirty years. ^_^

The Simpsons covered this:
"Aren't those just meaningless buzz words ..."

In the example you give, with "her and I" this fits with a different trend : perceived agreement needs diminish with distance. So, the perceived agreement need from the "grandpa left this" is stronger with the first part of the composite d.o. "her" than with the second part "I".
So if the go-to form is really "She and I got this from grandpa" then we can explain why the choice is "I" and not "me" for the second part of the d.o. while "her" and not "she" for the first part of the d.o.

But really, if the message cannot be misunderstood in spite of the agreement failure, it's not really a problem in informal speech. People just need to realize that written language IS NOT spoken language, which is why use of voice recognition for typing GREATLY increases the need for word-processing grammar checking - or for third party post-editing: this is why secretaries go to special training for learning to take dictation: they need be ready to do simultaneous interpretation between two different languages (spoken and written), while typing it up. That's like combining the very specialized jobs of Conference Interpreter and Official Stenographer!!!
Replacing that training with software is no mean feat, as these activities are major strength areas of the human brain, in that we can learn them well if trained - just like we can learn to speak a language even if we only hear samples that are full of contradictions.

Is that, the integral of 1/x is defined as the natural log of x.

your - you're
there - they're - their
its - it's

For some reason in the past few years I've noticed when I'm typing I will sometimes type the wrong version. I never used to do that. Luckily I always proofread my emails so they end up being correct.

One thing I see a lot of is the use of 'loose' instead of 'lose'. My brain hasn't gone haywire on that...yet!

but it is getting very rusty. I try to get it well-oiled every night.

Lose - Loose
To - Two - Too
just a couple of my minor irritants; the misuse can cause me to reread entire paragraphs trying to determine context or definition.

then - than
try and - try to
enquire - inquire
practice - practise
effect - affect

- the use of the second person in news reports and interviews particularly interviewing sports people or team experiences

- numbers used in words as shorthand

- superfluous phrases
>> at the end of the day...
>> as such...
>> Ill let you into a little secret...
>> to be honest...
>> dont hesitate to call...

I feel better now that I have shared that.

Principle - Principal

if we can locate buyers who care.

I can't understand people who don't care to be at their best, most correct when addressing an audience. A lecture packed with improper grammar distracts me from the subject matter. I gives me the impression that the speaker is careless, undereducated, and unprofessional. It can be confusing to follow if you are expecting the context to be in a given format. It can seem meaningless and illogical. And it irritates the **** out of me.

To graduate from college with an engineering degree I had to pass a writing test. The engineers were coached to the effect that the biggest problem was comma usage. We were encouraged to write short direct sentences. I wrote the entire essay using only one comma. My mom was an English teacher as well so that helped a lot too.

Using commas to insert a pause is a very powerful device. Its use creates emphasis and comprehension. Search for any great orator, and you will find they use commas, in such a manner.

Your (very good) point would be better taken without the second comma.

and the first one could be excluded as well. There is a natural pause before an 'and' and I have always been taught that a comma is not necessary before an 'and'.

Yes, I agree the last one could have not been used.
I just got carried away

I was taught the comma before "and" is not used if the prior text forms a list of greater than two items.

Nevertheless, I admit to, using commas, too often.

Brave your way in the world of commas -- not by harking to what you were taught -- but by striking out on your own. And when you strike out, figure on striking out a lot before you start hitting.

I hit one '64. Pop fly right into the pitcher's glove. He didn't have to leave the mound.
Then I "hit" on an idea. I would swing no more strikes, no more balls, no more outs.

I took up Solitaire.

superfluous. I'd point out as well that many (if not most) commas currently used should've been semicolons; the semicolon renders a 'thus' to the clause that follows it.

Too many perfectly fine clauses are interrupted by commas. The fact is, even the first comma in your sentence is 'optional', at best. Re-read it with NO commas; it it grammatically correct.....Oratory, a verbal (as opposed to written) form, may or may not include the stylistic device of frequent, hopefully-poignant pauses, or parallelism, or other oratorical devices to persuade the listener. When read (instead of heard), the orator's frequent pauses (rendered as commas) are tedious at best to endure. They are the punctuational equivalent of the obligatory 'big word' that some people cram into their prose by force, and look ostentatious rather than smart.

because he can insert the pauses repeatedly without it becoming tedious, and because he uses the language in a fashion which holds the attention, conveys meaning and entertains simultaneously.

My English Lit professor gave me this little jewel regarding comma usage: The words within commas are expansions on the central theme of the sentence. If the sentence still makes sense when you DO NOT include the comma-encapsulated words during a re-read, then the commas were used correctly, If, however, the sentence becomes gibberish without that punctuation, you have misused the comma. In my sentence, above, "If the sentence becomes gibberish without that punctuation, you have misused the comma.", I left out the word ', however,' and the sentence still makes sense and conveys the thought correctly; showing the proper use. Also, "Hey, don't you think, he's a dumba$$? Is another illustration. removing the encapsulated ", don't you think,", doesn't really work since it changes the sentence from a question to a statement.

NT

take ownership, opportunity instead of problem, stakeholders, "this is an exciting time to be here" instead of layoffs or rightsizing or expense reduction. blah, blah blah. Sometimes it seems everyone has been squeezed through a sales tube and came out the other side as plastic replicas

And don't you just hate it when people do not use capitalization and punctuation?

wHaT YOU Are tAlKing ABout!?!?!? Actually mentioning punctuation. Another thing about marketing speak is the constant exclamation mark. Like a little puppy on too much caffeine is talking!!!! Exclamation marks for effect only.

is the "mute" button.

The 'me vs. I' debate is less of an irritant to me than the even more common and jarring mixture of verb tense. I hear it all to often in day to day conversations, and even more often in the media.

TV news, for instance, insists on saying such things as "A driver is in hospital after he crashes..." or "When deputies arrived at the scene they find..."

At the extreme end are the people who relate stories about themselves and their past adventures using the present tense. "So I go to the store and I see dictionaries on sale..."

Sic transit mundi grammatica.