Re: IRC and English

At 3:27 PM +0100 9/1/09, Ashley Sheridan wrote:

On Tue, 2009-09-01 at 11:16 -0300, Martin Scotta wrote: -snip-

Martin Scotta Spanish Speaker

I disagree (and I did translate and read your Spanish message). This mailing list is English (I'm not sure if similar ones exist for Spanish-speaking people) so I wouldn't say that the people on the list can be accused of behaving the same way as these 'txt'ers. While Spanish is a very popular language, English is by far the most popular language of the world, being spoken as a main language (not necessarily the mother tongue though) in more countries than any other. It's also the most popular second language for those that don't speak it as a main language. I think the main point of this thread was to point out the issue of those who use 'txt spk' for normal conversations. It makes a bit of sense to do this for phone text messages, and is only natural that it came to be (character limits on a message, easier to type on a phone, etc) but there should be no excuse for posters on this list. It takes barely any more time to type 'you' instead of 'u', but trying to read a message full of stuff like that, I get a migrane and feel disinclined to help out purely because it takes too much effort to understand! Thanks, Ash

Ash: I agree with you -- this was not a slam against non-English speaking people but rather a compliant against those who are too lazy to type out "you" (instead shorten it to "u"). My take on this is, programming does not allow you to take liberties with syntax, you must spell exactly as you are required. Likewise, don't take such liberties with this list. In short, if you want us to take the time to understand your problem, then don't make our work harder by requiring us to first figure out the syntax of your question. I ignore anyone using shortened words, such as "u" instead of "you". I figure that they don't want to take the time to ask correctly, then I don't want to take the time to figure out what they are asking. Cheers, tedd -- ------- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com