Clinton - Profile

No need to be curious, it was not me who joined a forum and started arguing

That doesn't answer my question of course. You evaded it. You sure you don't have a PPE from Oxford?  ;)   

It's not the plumbers, bakers or the gardeners.... But always the lawyers, teachers, clergy and medical profession

Okay, I get it. Professionals are either convicted criminals or yet to be convicted criminals. Keep taking them chill pills, yo, they is working. You've made the transition - undisguised anger to simmering hatred.

education goes far wider than what you can learn in a classroom
No kidding, Einstein! I grew up in a fishing village in India. I left school at sixteen to start my own business. I graduated privately (night study) from a little known university in a small backwater of a third world country where most people don't speak English. Yet I know how many full stops to use at the end of a sentence. You want to teach me that there's education outside of a classroom? If you got irony you'd be killing yourself right now.

BTW, a tip for you: try WD-40, it may cure your sticky key. Spray WD-40 liberally on your keyboard. Turn keyboard upside down. Shake violently. Buy new computer.  

What outwardly may be seen as deliberate ignorance or taking a stand against the culturally superior, is just a by product of the old barriers breaking down.

Steve, I don't buy that. ITGeek007's last post says that some people "CAN think of themselves as far superior ". Er, they are superior. Nobody has trouble with people being better than they are in many fields of life. But when it comes to anything academic or intellectual they go crazy and spew bile all over the place because they associate intellectual achievement with social class.

This is especially so with communication skills - the ability to express oneself clearly and without ambiguity, the ability to construct a logical argument, the ability to put a coherent sentence together. It never fails to bring out the reverse snobbery. It's balmy! Or Barney. Or however you want to spell it.  

I get that some feel strongly against claims of superiority arising from birth, the notion that someone is more worthy simply because they were born in a particular family. But they don't do their case any favours by rejecting education, self-improvement and proper use of language. In their rejection they're reinforcing ignorance and perpetuating privilege.

They're their own worst enemies.   In the meanwhile the "fool" who got (or gave himself) a good education is getting paid more ...and laid more. He's stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid like a fox.

But the REAL education is when you get out into the big wide world and start experiencing life etc

ITGeek007, the real world has the potential to provide a great education. But not everyone drinks from the fountain. Some folk are keen to improve. Others take delight in staying ignorant; they wouldn't recognise a life lesson if it bit them in the ass. They assume that simply by virtue of not going to college they know more about life than those who did. That they are somehow more honourable, more worthy. They, in all their "virtuous" ignorance, are the ultimate snobs.

Am in a hurry so E&OE and all that jazz.

Thanks. It's heartening you understand where the emphasis lies and have taken on board that a thread about grammar is a good place to stay on the right side of grammar law.

Steve, I hear what you're saying, but despite being in the UK for over a quarter of a century I'll never get used to reverse snobbery and the desperation people exhibit in aligning themselves with ignorance and stupidity. There seems to be some invisible badge of honour in taking a stand against anything that is intellectually or culturally superior. The seeds for this seem to be sown in, ironically, schools!

Those who wallow in this crab bucket often delude themselves that simple (even illiterate) people are nicer, kinder and even wiser than the erudite, sophisticated or educated. That simply by virtue of being educated or knowledgeable one becomes part of an elite that merits being despised. That any ambition to better oneself intellectually is a betrayal of one's roots. That if you improve yourself today you may be clipping 'them' vowels tomorrow.

Hilarious.

Especially when one comes, as I do, from a culture where educated people - particularly teachers, the givers of knowledge -  are treated with more respect. It was always so in ancient cultures ...from the Mayas to Mohenjo-daro to Ming. Respect for scholars and seekers of knowledge is still near universal in cultures from Germany to Japan. But not in modern Reality TV Britain.

It's amusing rather than infuriating.

But I've lingered long and need to get back to work. I'll let this thread sail without me for now and wish her fair wind and calm seas.

Ah, okay, I've got it, there's no vegetable connection. Very droll. You're as witty as you are charming.

I'm curious about one thing though. You seem angry enough at a lot of people to hurl insults at them. I was wondering which group it is that you see as the worst kind. Is it the ones who have a decent education, i.e., the ones with their heads "stuck up their rear ends"; the "grammar police" who have the temerity to speak and write correctly or those "pompous pratts" who man university admission panels, interview boards, courtrooms etc. where individuals who sound ignorant often lose out?

Ah, the old rhubarb about education and common sense being mutually exclusive.

It's clear you associate educated people with a lack of commonsense i.e. that people tend to have one quality or the other, not both. I bow to your superior commonsense and the entitlement it bestows upon you to throw an ad hominem.

Our educational institutions seem filled with attitudes like these - negative stereotypes surrounding "geeks", "nerds" and anyone who doesn't subscribe to the gospel of mediocrity. Our social hierarchy reserves a special vitriol for intelligence and aspiration at the expense of showering recognition and peer accolades on those who choose to act and be dumb.

It's a shame as it doesn't do our young people any favours. Neither does the puerile excuse about language evolution. Till the language actually does evolve to accept "you was" and "should of", users taking these liberties can and will be disadvantaged not just in university and job interviews but even in deals involving simple everyday communication.

Moving on ...

Originally Posted by Barney

“something that really doesn't matter to the masses in the modern computer geek world we now live in.......”

I teach my children that no matter how they speak when with friends there is no excuse for not retaining the ability to use formal language when required, and no substitute for knowing when to use it.

That lesson on its own shouldn't give them a significant competitive advantage in the working world, but it does. The reason it does is because "the masses" as you call them don't give a sh*t about grammar.

The upwardly mobile, aspirational young person is never disadvantaged by being articulate. Various governments have thrown a ton of cash on the social mobility problem. They'd achieve a lot more, I believe, if they diverted those funds to changing some attitudes.

Where I'm from and where you think I'm from are, er, poles apart.

>>he just goes around correcting everyone's English.

You claim to have an eye for detail and you say you have assisted someone correct his CV. Yet in a thread about grammar you make every mistake in the book (including use of you're instead of your). We're not talking typos but mistakes demonstrating poor understanding of some basics. It would be remiss to not point them out. It's not personal.

Didn't read the report, sorry, but there's no logical reason why bounce rate should affect ranking. Using bounce rate in the algo wouldn't be consistent with how the Gorg do things.

1. Google does not have access to universal bounce rate data so are unlikely to use bounce rates.  All they have is the back button stats (and GA... which they say they don't use). By their own admission, back button ain't no good metric.

2. A quality article with thousands of words is good, right? It gets a higher rank. It answers the visitor's question comprehensively. Visitors tend to close their browser after reading this page i.e. higher bounce rate. Why would Google "penalise" the page for being so great? It doesn't add up.

Same difference.

I think you perceive a contradiction between the two extracts. However, I don't see one. Perhaps you could elucidate.

The extent to which one is judged on the quality of one's English varies based on profession and one's position within it. There will be some pedant's who refuse to hire a plumber who uses grocers' apostrophes. Ha, ha, see what I 'done' there?!

As I've asserted, I'm not one of them.

I agree with you that clients often choose based on price and other considerations. We'll have to agree to disagree on whether poor English can ever be, on its own, the cause of a lost sale.

Julia, I experienced them shoes recently. It was awful. See below.

Higgers, perhaps it's the text generation, but this text generation is now getting into teaching. I was at a local grammar school recently - one of the top schools in the country - and a young geography teacher was explaining the rules on shoes. "Them shoes are okay," she said, "And them shoes and them shoes and them shoes". Just in case the audience didn't quite understand, her next slide was of shoes that were not allowed. "Them shoes are not okay, and them shoes and them shoes and them shoes."

What hope have the kids got?

I do not see any contradiction. There is no way to say for sure how individual customers will perceive poor grammar. Whatever your profession or trade it doesn't hurt to iron out the mistakes that are likely to impact on credibility.

We are agreed on CVs - they should have no mistakes. But it's not always that the candidates have been careless; it's often the case that they simply don't know better. They overestimate their abilities and believe their CVs are error free. Blame the schools or blame the culture of accepting almost good enough when it comes to written communication. Either way, it doesn't help those candidates.

The ones who didn't get called for an interview don't know why they didn't get called just as  customers who decide to go with a competitor don't usually explain why they choose that competitor.

BTW, it's "may have" instead of "may of". ;) This is a thread about grammar after all; it would be rude to mention those mistakes in a general business discussion. I'm glad you like the banter.