[Pdx-pm] September meeting tonight: "Now on 2nd Thursdays" Social

[Chad Granum]

The real problem is that the written form of contractions require
special syntax, whereas the spoken form does not require special
vocalizations.

"You're safe!" Vs "Your safe!"  in writing these are very different,
in the latter I am warning you something is wrong with the safe you
own, in the former I am noting what condition you are in. Both are
partial sentences consisting of two words (when defined by space
separated tokens). In each partial sentence both tokens have different
meanings.

But now say both out loud. There is no spoken difference. The only way
to know what is going on is the context. I would argue that in written
form you will usually have the same context information. Either way,
arguing that you should write it correctly for clarity is a farce if
you do not also advocate for a way to clarify the spoken form,
otherwise we have 2 different forms of English, and expect people to
translate depending on what they are doing.

It is difficult enough to get a point across in writing, needing to
translate what I say into different forms of English from that which I
speak is overhead I do not care for.

On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 10:39 AM, Joshua Keroes <joshua at keroes.com> wrote:
> There's an entire spectrum of communication quality.
> Take your computer, for example. What if it's on a lossy link? Yes, your
> computer will rerequest the TCP packets that were forgotten or corrupted,
> but UDP's gone for good, and your network traffic will be slow indeed. Is
> that really ideal?
> By the same token (no pun intended), poor spoken communication makes for
> slow and imprecise conversation because the listener has to piece back
> together the speaker's attempted communication. Incorrect word choice causes
> cognitive dissonance in the listener which is distracting, much like corrupt
> packets.
> -Joshua
>
> On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Chad Granum <exodist7 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> My Take:
>>
>> Language rules are in place to help make communication understandable.
>> They do not exist to give a select few a feeling of superiority or
>> power trip. If a rule is violated one should pause and consider "Did
>> the communication succeed, or does the communication confuse me?" if
>> confused ask for elaboration, otherwise mission complete end of story.
>> If you know a rule was violated, and which rule then the communication
>> succeeded, wait for someone to pipe in that they are confused, only
>> then should you point out the rule violation in order to aid the
>> communication.
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 10:23 AM, Randal L. Schwartz
>> <merlyn at stonehenge.com> wrote:
>> >>>>>> "benh" == benh  <ben.hengst at gmail.com> writes:
>> >
>> > benh> This again:
>> > benh> http://twitter.com/#!/notbenh/status/109484048593850368
>> >
>> > If it were possible to change the English language by a simple tweet,
>> > I'm sure we'd be writing it as "UR" by now. :)
>> >
>> > --
>> > Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777
>> > 0095
>> > <merlyn at stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
>> > Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
>> > See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> >
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>