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From: chabot@amber.DEC (Lisa Chabot)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: "I don't care who this offends!!"
Message-ID: <2046@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 27-Jun-84 10:35:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.2046
Posted: Wed Jun 27 10:35:48 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Jun-84 03:48:22 EDT
Organization: DEC Engineering Network
Lines: 68

Scott Barman said:
> To all you pompus morons who feel that you must correct spelling and gramatical
> errors in postings to such groups as "net.jokes" and "net.flame":
> Do you talk in perfect English?  ...

Well, a great many of us do better than you do.

> If you do you are among a very, very small minority!  

Horrors!  There's nothing worse than not being part of the masses.  (Especially the grubby masses :-)

> Spoken English (as spoken in the USA) is not intended to strictly conform to 
> proper English.  

Just who is doing the intending here?  The language can't, since we really 
should deny it any such anthropomorphic characteristics.  We can't speak of the
intentions of the designers of English, since it wasn't designed. And I 
remember enough of American government to know that the Constitution doesn't
restrict English usage. 

But at any rate, the medium of this newsgroup is written English, not spoken
English, and there are certainly recommendations for proper written English.
There is no such thing as perfect English -- the word "perfect" has no meaning
in this context. 

> Is there anything concrete that says EXACTLY what perfect English is?  I don't
> think so!  To prove it I will give the following senario:
>	I was taking my second quarter of English the same time I was
>	taking a class in assembly language programming (IBM 370 assembler).
>	The same day a program was due, a paper was due for the English
>	class.  Since I had little time to write a paper from scratch,
>	I found a paper from the previous quarter that I made a B on and
>	retyped it to hand in.  I made a C on the paper the second time.
>	Both English teachers had a PhD (in English).
> Two English professors could not agree on what was correct or not!

This example is more telling of perfect stupidity and complete dishonesty than
of anything else.  Clearly, what was deserved in the second class was an F.
This doesn't deserve any discussion of how the subject matter or the required
essay quality of the two classes differed.

> If these people, who are trained in the usage of the English language to
> the point they recieved their PhD's using the language, could not agree, then
> how can you pompus asses out there (most WITHOUT PhD's in English) criticize
> someone elses grammar.  

What a deflating concept of higher education!  To think that one is trained,
rather than educated!  I went to school to be educated, and I took with me
a sense of knowing not to cheat.  I did gain education, and I still know not
to cheat. (On the other hand, considering where I went, maybe I was tooled. :-)

However, if it requires a certificate showing one has reached the PhD level of 
training before one may criticize English, perhaps it ought to require at least
a MS before one may contribute to newsgroups (this would save my time :-). This
would prove useful in ensuring proper direction of articles:

> ... you pompus asses out there...

Perhaps Barman means "pampas asses" (because I surely can't find "pompus" in 
any dictionary)... but, then, why, if he wishes to communicate with
Argentinian burros is he sending off garbage to net.flame?

	On the other hand, net.flame *is* a natural habitat for asswholes,
	L S Chabot

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