site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3931 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Are you able to orally recite word for word any stories, poems, epics, etc.? Maybe you know a few by heart, but you probably wouldn't be able to match what the Greeks passed e.g. the Iliad or the Odyssey, and even if you somehow did, most people wouldn't. That doesn't mean our memories are worse, it's just that there is no need to memorize word for word entire stories because you can just pick up a book, or your phone, and read it.

Similarly, spelling and punctuation just seems to be a skillset that's not as important anymore. When it took months for your message to get across to someone across the planet, you better hope you wrote your message properly. Writing in ink also meant fixing mistakes would be a laborious and expensive exercise. Now you can just edit to fix your post later, or clarify in a follow up tweet/text.

I'm not surprised spelling and punctuation has gotten worse. I'm probably worse at it today than I was back in high school or college. That's because my phone or computer will autocorrect 90% of my errors, so I'm not as careful anymore. Why get good at spelling if your writing device will fix it for you? Focus on the content/message instead.

Edit: I remembered something quite humorous, one Timothy Dexter from the 18th century, who wrote a book filled with misspelling and no punctuations, and in the 2nd edition just put a page full of punctuation marks to "pepper and salt as you please." See Sam O'Nella's youtube video for an entertaining summary.

Despite his complete lack of knowledge (or care) for writing and penmanship, he set out to compose a work that would out-wit Shakespeare, and rival the learnedness of Milton. His working title (which, of course, made absolutely no sense): “A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress.” The book was atrociously misspelled, and entirely devoid of punctuation — there were no periods, no commas, no dashes or semicolons — it was merely a jumbled mess of nearly incomprehensible writing.

Clearly people were just as capable of making spelling and grammatical mistakes in the past, we are probably filtered to look at the works of the most intelligent and well-educated people, and there probably was a greater cultural emphasis on proof-reading and editing. Even 50 years ago it would be quite an effort to publish something for the world to see, you'd probably need to be educated and have connections, now any random Joe can just tweet his thoughts to the world.

Similarly, spelling and punctuation just seems to be a skillset that's not as important anymore.

My nephew is 23 and started his first year of medical school this semester. From kindergarten to present he has never had any formal instruction in spelling in school. Ever. His teachers say they stopped teaching spelling under the assumption the kids would just "pick it up" as they read. To be fair his entire pre-college education was ~99% concerned with passing standardized tests at an extremely poor rural school district. Things may well be different in schools with more resources. I can say with confidence he is entirely incapable of spelling the English language correctly without spellchecking software of some sort and accidentally uses the wrong homonym about 50% of the time. Than/then and there/their/they're are essentially the exact same word for him; the meaning of the word is only deduced from context, not spelling. He finished his undergrad with no issues.

My understanding is that several school districts across the country have periodically rolled out (and then revoked) what amounts to an "immersion" program for English grammar. It becomes popular, people try it and they realize it is crap, take it away....and then bring it back out years later. If you are raised during one of the rollouts...it fucking sucks.

Isn't spelling kind of important for a doctor? He could kill people with misspelled prescriptions.

Nah it was a historical problem back in the days of handwriting but these days communication is almost all by electronic medical records, sometimes people will give out hard prescriptions but it is easy for doctors to dial in and make it legible. More than spelling you used to have issues dosages and frequencies in the handwritten days though.

Incidentally many medications are either super easy to spell (often brand names) or absolutely fucking impossible without external help.

Considering your nephew is going to medical school he's clearly intelligent but it is shocking to hear that even intelligent individuals have that much issue with spelling, considering how often you'd come across someone complaining about bad grammar. People used to make songs/parodies about grammar and spelling, such as Weird Al's Word Crime or youtuber Jack film's Raping vs Rapping. I wonder if there is similar content being produced for entertainment nowadays poking fun at spelling/grammar, or if the next generation just don't care anymore.

I wondered if bad spelling or grammar can lead to a death, similar to how doctors' sloppy handwriting killed 7000 annually but I can't come up with a plausible scenario similar to the bad handwriting one, and there doesn't seem to be any such cases.

Is this in the United States?

That seems so alien to my experience with school.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats