Talking to people for the first time via e-mail can be an enlightening (if frustrating) experience… especially when you get letters like these that make you wonder “Did this person even read what they were typing or was it a blind chimpanzee at the keyboard with a dictionary by his side?” I’ve noticed the same goes for IMing where a “who dis?” or “m/15/horny. ur info?” are standard ice breakers. What kind of first impressions do these people think they’re making? I have no problem with slang, but it’s not that difficult to write in a language approaching proper English. And would you ever walk up to someone you didn’t know and just blurt out “Hey! Horny?” while grabbing your crotch? No. So why would you come off that way the first time you write to someone? Just the other day I got an e-mail that had the subject “SUCKA ASS FOO” and it’s HTML content consisted of a pair of double quotes. You can bet that one went right into the trash.
Now, I’m certainly not King Grammarian, but I’m pretty sure that most sentences start with capital letters. And I believe that “you’re” is the proper contraction of “you are,” not “ur.” And here’s something else to consider: if you write to me and you’re sloppy in presentation, I’ll just ignore you.
And now I realize I sound like my third grade teacher as she was teaching us sentence structure. -ram
Posted in Technology
Paul December 21, 2010, 1:41 am
‘And would you ever walk up to someone you didn’t know and just blurt out “Hey! Horny?” while grabbing your crotch? No.’
…Still funny, ten years later.