In an effort to promote the greatest level of professionalism in our community I have opened a new thread.

Part of being a professional includes having good communication skills. Part of communicating well includes good thinking, good writing, good grammar, and so on. Although I tend to be sparse on punctuation (I believe there will be a global shortage of commas in the near future) I do try to adhere to most other fundamental conventions in the written word.

One area I have seen us pros lacking on a consistent basis is in the area of spelling. We can't appear as professionals if we write like fifth graders. Ernie has been both diligent and vigilant, often staying up to the wee hours correcting other posts to try to raise the level of our industry in these key linguistic skills.

Most recently he corrected the poster who was having trouble with pulling a wire and talked about the "eves". Eve of course was the one who goofed up the entire human race (nearly) irreparably by eating the forbidden fruit in the garden. EAVE or EAVES is the proper spelling.

Another one that makes me nutty is when someone posts, looking for a DISCREET power code. DISCREET is something done secretly, or in a low keyed fashion. DISCRETE is a word meaning "separate" or distinct, and therefore we look for DISCRETE codes.

There are more. I am sure more can chime in.

Ed, we will discuss capitalization in another thread.

Yours for a professional industry,

Sincerely,

I remain,

Tom

This is a must:

http://www.m-w.com/

We usually deal with very educated people and I try my hardest to pretend to be one of those educated people. I have an Associated and almost a 2nd one, plus several courses towards a BSEE, but what I remember most of school was a couple of English classes, and how to communicate properly.

One of my English Professors, who had a law degree and a couple of various Masters (English and something else) once spent about 10 minutes tearing apart an essay I wrote, called me a this and that person. Then proceeded to give me a B on the essay. The way she tore my work apart I would of been happy with a D. Needless to say that conversation has stuck with me to this day when I write or even speak. And I did end up with an A in the course, one of the most benificial courses I had to take.

Please reread what you have written before you post, I have to credit Ernie for making me double check things I have written almost as much as that Professor.

Tom,
I have seen many times users of this forum looking for DISCREET, DISCRETE codes. For them, they are one in the same code.

The favorite Miss Spelling to see is not Tori Spelling, but [Link: alphadictionary.com] .
To not visit the site would make you fatuous. :)
I love the 100 funniest words in the English dictionary.

Just as long as it does not make me flatulent.

My pet peeve is people typing "your" when they mean "you're". It drives me nutz!

And why is it that people of certain ethnicity say AXE when the mean ASK?

That would be 'would have'


I think that would be 'I have seen users of this forum looking for DISCREET, DISCRETE codes many times.'

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

I'm far from perfect, but I agree with Tom.

Damn you, there goes my perfect streak for the week!!

I agree. And I'm pretty bad when it comes to grammer and spelling etc.

What concerns me, is the low level of writing skills the kids coming out of High School have. Our educational system used to be at the top of the heap back in the late fifties early sixties.... Now we are around #27.

I live not too far from Microsoft, and it is amazing how many middle eastern employees they have working there now. The reason being, is that those countries & cultures are really putting the pressure on education. The kids in India are a hot-bed of top-notch software engineers, and programmers. They are better educated, and are basically starting to kick ass in the tech - sector.

The U.S. is generally letting itself get dummed - down, and nobody seems to be doing much about it, except that Bill & Melinda Gates are working on making changes, raising our awareness of our horrible educational facilities and attitiudes "over here", and trying to figure out a game plan to help turn things around.

Our public schools for the most part (there are exceptions in the wealthier suburbs), are so bad. My son is in high school, and to go to that school and walk the hallways, and see the lack of control that the teachers have, and lack of respect the kids have is really pretty upsetting...

When it comes to spelling I am amongst the worst offenders. I'd like to think that there is a difference between a dummy such as myself who knows the difference between no and know but cannot spell either and the individual who does not. Once upon a time I was a graduate student and part of earning my keep was a job as teaching assistant. I found out quickly that despite the Ivy environs I had to cease teaching my assigned subject matter and rather teach rhetoric and logic. While I believe in the 3 "r"s I am just the sort of liberal Tom hates the most. I do believe that learning to express oneself is more important than proper spelling. Then again, I'd bet I am one of the few people participating here who has read many of the original reprints of 17th century American writings. They had a most interesting way of spelling back then. Of course, our cousins across the pond spell color according to it's Norman roots as colour. We Americans had Webster to codify our misspellings. I dislike most e-mail abreviations. "LOL" being the most offensive. Then again there are those who criticize my using words outside the vanacular as if using a word usually associated with studying for the SAT is wrong. I'll give a pass on the occasional misspelling, especially given how rare it is that I write anything with fewer words spelled correctly than not, for a wonderfully turned phrase or a thought expressed well. So Tom, ever heard the phrase, " all that is solid melts into air"?

Alan

Time for a horn toot... When in 6th grade I won the Kitsap County Spelling Bee. Gramatically, I'm OK but not as good as real scholars. I have always looked at spelling though and Word docs or e-mails that go to customers with a bunch of words mis-spelled have got to leave some kind of negative impression.

My old business partner never finished any school above 9th grade. While he was definitely a personable guy with good sales and relations skills his spelling was atrocious. If he wrote something for marketing materials I would have to completely redo it. Proposals and especially e-mails were hardly ever able to be checked though. After doing reconnaissance through old e-mails for viable customers, I saw a lot of the e-mails that went out and they left me with the impression that I was back home in Seabeck, Washington... home to a lot of kids that grew up in logger families and basically dropped out as early as 7th grade. As a client, I would take notice of this and I'm sure it had an effect on us, especially toward the end of my partner's reign where his attention to detail was next to nil.

That said, there are definitely mis-spellings in my own posts and they are not related to a lack of the ability to spell the word but to my hunt and peck typing skills...which really suck!

An installer who can also spell? Now that's a rare breed considering half the installers I've met are alchoholics or have been to prison.

I happen to be a one man team who pulls wire in attics, does programming and stays up at night writing detailed, concise proposals to win bids against the big companies. While I'm probably not the absolute best at what I do, I don't think it's realistic to expect all installers to be geniuses. Those who can write probably think they're to good to be doing dirty work.

Was that intentional, and a joke?

No. While I can write, and do the writing for the company, I am not to (too) good to get dirty. I'm certain many of those here are in the same position.

No, that was actually an honest mistake and a funny one. I'm not known to have a sense of humour - I couldn't have come up with something so brilliant, intentionally....Man, this thread makes me so self conscious...

Daniel, can you please add a spellchecker here?

A spell checker would not have helped you on that one. Proof your stuff. Not that I'm perfect, have no doubt...

Im a just a lousy typer. And a bad speller to boot...