[plug] [OT] Nit-Picking (was: CommIT Day 2, summary)

[Craig Ringer]

On Sun, 2004-09-19 at 19:57, Cameron Patrick wrote:
> Jeffrey Lim wrote:
> 
> > We all have to make sure that we stick to at least some basic proper
> > rules dont we?
> 
> Well, we have to make sure that we can understand each other.

I feel it worth noting that not everybody can easily read English under
the best of circumstances.  One can simply not be fluent in the
language, or other issues may exist that make reading even good, clear
English difficult.  As such, it doesn't hurt to put a little extra
effort in and make your posts more readable.

This is something I have understood for a while, but I've really been
having it driven home lately as I'm doing quite a lot of bug testing on
IRC with people who speak very little English.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm very, very far from perfect in
this regard. Lots of speling errors, often rather stupid ones, a
long-winded and convoluted writing style, grammatical problems, and
frequent lack of clarity in my posts are all things I'm guilty of.

Still, I think it's simply common courtesy - to other list members, and
those reading and searching our archives later - to put a little effort
into writing.

> However, not everyone has James's ability to pick up on typos (and so
> may not notice them in their own writing, even if they are aware that
> what they wrote is somehow "wrong")

Heh. I've found a mail client with a built-in as-you-type spelling check
extremely helpful in that regard. Now I just have to convince it that
en_AU is not actually the union of en_US and en_GB for spelling, as
currently it thinks that both 'color' and 'colour' are correct.

--
Craig Ringer