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From: hartsook@sdcsvax.UUCP (Larry Hartsook)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Minor Catharsis
Message-ID: <96@sdcsvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Sep-84 15:32:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.96
Posted: Tue Sep 25 15:32:02 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Sep-84 06:49:05 EDT
Expires: Wed, 10-Oct-84 03:00:00 EDT
References: <319@ihu1e.UUCP>
Reply-To: hartsook@sdcsvax.UUCP (Larry Hartsook)
Organization: EECS Dept. U.C. San Diego
Lines: 33

In article <319@ihu1e.UUCP> nowlin@ihu1e.UUCP (Jerry Nowlin) writes:
>
>This flame is for all you nitpicking arrogant assholes that can't read an
>article without first checking it for the correct use of "its/it's",
>"your/you're", "there/their/they're" . . .

Okay fool, you might have a point if we nitpicking assholes got
peeved about an occasional error.  BUT it's not the occasional error
that bothers us; it's the chronic one that turns us into screaming
grammarians.  'Look for the content,' you say.  It is impossible to look
for content destroyed by bad grammar, bad usage and bad style.  Every
person who's ever written anything and had it criticized because of
misspelled or improper words has cried, 'You didn't even look at what
I was trying to say!'  So what?  What sort of insight can I expect from
someone who hasn't the brains (or, more likely, the desire) to be sure
that what he or she wrote was correct?  None, at least that's what I
feel when I read some piece of illiterate, content-charged garbage.

If what you have to say is important, take the time to couch it in
terms that will convey its importance (and I do not mean obscure it
with polysyllabic latinates and convoluted language).  Ideas put
forth clearly, precisely and correctly exert much more force than
the same ideas put forth in ungrammatical constructions.

I doubt very much that is all that difficult to write a grammatically
correct article.  Most people really do know how to write or at least
have access to something that will tell them what is correct and what
isn't.  A dictionary and the MLA Handbook can work wonders.

-------------------
Hey, this is fun!
			Larry Hartsook
			UCSD Pascal/EMU Project