Tag Archive for 'lolliteracy'

Death to “In My Humble Opinion”

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 6:15 PM on September 26, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/20

I think now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice, IMHO. Just my $0.02. –@MartinLutherKing on Twitter

Why is it that we must tell everyone on the Internet that things are only our opinion?

Of course “I think” what I’m about to say. Why else would I be saying it? Of course it’s “in my opinion,” because I’m saying it. Anything said by anyone is, when you get down to it, inherently related to what they think, which is consequently their opinion. But now that they’ve been so kind as to emphasize that fact, it hurts their argument.

Here are two different statements a person can make:

A: I think that jumping off the George Washington Bridge can cause severe bodily harm. That could be fatal, in my opinion.

B: Nobody can get hurt from jumping off the George Washington Bridge. It’s actually very healthy and promotes long-life.

Now, assuming you didn’t know anything about the effects of jumping off a bridge, which of these two arguments would be more convincing to you? At first glance, without Wikipediing anything? Most of you will say statement B.

Adding language like, “I think” or “In my opinion” (or IMO or IMHO) to your arguments weakens them. You will sound less sure of yourself, or at the very least like you don’t care as much. This applies to actual speech as well as online discussion.

Some might argue that such disclaimers are common courtesy, but to the audience you’re addressing, they’re common sense. It’s not impolite to omit needless words, and doing so makes the remaining words stronger.

MG Siegler Destroys the English Language – Episode 3

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 7:03 PM on July 23, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/aa

MG Siegler Destroys the Enlgish Language

Today on MG Siegler Destroys the English Language, MG seems to be having a better day in terms of competence. But in “The Mac Versus PC Debate Has Never Been Clearer“, he proves once again that he has no idea what an em dash is supposed to do. Oh, and some other things.

The point MG makes in the article is a great one: the Mac vs. PC debate is very much like a Porsche vs. Camry comparison. But that doesn’t make his writing any less aggravating to read.
Continue reading ‘MG Siegler Destroys the English Language – Episode 3′

MG Siegler Destroys the English Language – Episode 2

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 8:18 PM on July 19, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/9K

TechCrunch writer MG Siegler is certainly no stranger to “innovative” grammar. While experimentation in writing style and the bending conventional rules is often a wonderful thing, MG’s methods cause his articles to read quite awkwardly. It seems he hasn’t learned a thing since I first, shall we say, “critiqued” him, as he has once again brought out the Strunk & White supremacist in me. I get the feeling these incidents aren’t going to stop very soon, so I might as well start keeping count.
mgsdestroy
Today on MG Siegler Destroys the English Language, we turn our attention to MG’s piece “FasterWeb Wants To Make The Entire Web Up To Ten Times Faster In 2010“. Once again, MG can’t get two sentences out before screwing something up, and one sentence later proves that he can’t finish his opening paragraph without misusing the em dash:
Continue reading ‘MG Siegler Destroys the English Language – Episode 2′

Dear Newsblogs: Learn To Punctuate

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 5:50 PM on June 6, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/Qj

This article on TechCrunch is a perfect example of why some people still don’t take Internet journalism seriously. Have a look at the first three sentences:

Celebrities get impersonated on the web. They’re famous — everyone is anonymous — it happens. Most celebrities just ignore it; but some get pissed off.

Three sentences in, and writer MG Siegler — a man featured in the New York Times at one point, according to his bio — has already misused both the em dash and the semicolon. Perhaps this is an attempt by Siegler to sound intelligent through the use of esoteric punctuation; both sentences call for the use of boring, everyday commas.

Yes, I know, I’m being a grammar Nazi, and relatively few people care about this kind of thing. The problem, however, is that punctuation communicates ideas that words alone cannot. Letters represent the sounds we make when speaking; punctuation represents the pauses we make in between.

If you think it’s limiting to have only 140 characters to express a thought, try eliminating 90% of the English language. If people stop caring about proper use of punctuation, it will lose its meaning entirely. This will destroy a writer’s ability to communicate voice; without the range of punctuation we have available to us, it’s impossible to read anything as if an actual person might be speaking it. It’s not eliminating 90% of the English dictionary, but it’s certainly eliminating 90% of the spoken language.

Of course, this may be a by-product of the questionable literacy of Internet users. Perhaps very few people still know the difference between a comma, em dash, semicolon, or paragraph break, and thus it no longer matters; every writer is the same to people who don’t know how to read for voice.

To be fair, none of my English classes ever mentioned proper use of the em dash or semicolon; if I recall correctly, I learned both through a combination of my father and Wikipedia. So, yes, this is a complex, deep-rooted problem with all sorts of causes and effects. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fixed.

Okay, now I’m going to finish reading that TechCrunch article.

Dear Newsblogs: Copy. Editing. Do It.

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 1:40 AM on May 22, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/Vl

This is getting ridiculous. I can’t count how many times I’ve spotted a typo or grammatical error on a newsblog like Ars Technica or Gawker days or weeks after an article was originally published. Come on, people, I know typos and mistakes can slip by your eye before you hit Publish, but fix them when you inevitably notice them later. Even if it’s an old article, just press Edit and fix it. It’s not hard.

There’s even less of an excuse when you have 8 or 10 staff writers with editing privileges reading each other’s articles. Or when you make 5 updates to a breaking story and your third sentence still talks about “Aople, Inc.”