Forum name typo fix request

[miguelvp]

I pretty much do read every post, doesn't everyone? But that's beside the point.

Maybe a piece of knowledge that would help you is inside a badly written post or paper or blog, or even on an abbreviated text messages with a lot of LOLs and OMGs or even LOL's and OMG's

As for Stephen Hawking, what I said is that he has communication problems. But regarding his papers, he uses assistants FWIW.

Anyways, you can decide what you want to filter out based on grammar, others don't mind, and if you think someone with bad grammar has nothing to contribute, well, that's your problem not mine

[Bassman59]

This is a technical forum as long as the meanning is clear whats the big deal. I could understand if this was a writers forum or where a bunch of dweebs get together to argue what they perceive to be the important issues of the day but it isn't.

I know proper punctuation,grammar and spelling are considered by some to be a sign of intellegence but it could also be because english is not the persons first language or pure laziness.

I'm quite sure that your compiler will know what you mean when you screw up that annoying punctuation and syntax.

[Mark Hennessy]

To return to the original question, yes, there is no doubt that the apostrophe should be removed.

I help to run a forum, and I know from experience that it takes all of 10 seconds to change board titles. Admittedly, I'm not using SMF, but if someone tells me that it's more difficult to do that within SMF, then that's simply yet another reasons why I'm glad I'm not using it 

So, who do we speak to? Is Dave the only admin? Let's go straight to the source rather than go round in circles in threads that are easily missed by a busy support team - send him e-mail! Keep it polite and constructive, and I'm sure he'll oblige.

Like I say, literally 10 seconds. That's really all it should take once the message has landed at the right person.

[xrunner]

The forum owner's are probably working on project's, schedule's, and tear-down's and don't have a lot of break's to help member's with such trivial request's ... 

[Psi]

The solution is to rewrite the English language so it makes sense.

[Psi]

I tend to use commas whenever i want the person reading the text to add a pause,  not necessarily where there should be one grammatically

[c4757p]

ESL doesn't matter. The forum is managed by a native English speaker. Native English speakers who can't figure out things like apostrophes are just embarrassing.

[amyk]

It appears to have been fixed. I couldn't stop seeing that extra apostrophe once this thread came into existence. Thanks.

[JoeN]

GODDAMN IT, YOU BROKE MY SCRIPT!

 

[Andy Watson]

Never mind. There's still a typo on the "Jobs" board description. 

[rs20]

...
Oh you mean like this literary masterpiece.
...

Wooooooow, now that is holding a grudge. Yikes.

[ez24]

Drives me nuts!

No country flag's drive's me nut's so's we are even.   ie you have no flag and I do not know where to put the 's  (flunked this subject )

Flunked as in a F in the 5th or 6th grade, and never learned where to put the damn " ' ", so I always' put them after the s

[edavid]

22: OCD syntax error, <rant> not found.

SIGSEGV is inevictable if you try to talk more than you know.

Speaking of syntax errors, do you mean "inevitable", or is this a joke I didn't get 

[funkathustra]

First of all, thanks to Dave for addressing my request and fixing it.

To the haters on this thread: my request had nothing to do with messages that people send back and forth on here -- I was only suggesting that the board's name (not "forum's name" -- thanks for the clarification, xrunner!) be spelled correctly.

But there's an interesting discussion going on about writing quality -- why should we care? What if someone doesn't speak English as her first language? We're engineers, not poets, damnit! Do we really need to sound like John Updike when discussing how to double-buffer SERDES data on FPGA's?

My problem with sloppy writing has nothing to do with pretentiousness or blind adherence to rules -- I've got no problem with people who "could care less" about grammar. And, if you want to start a sentence with a contraction, that's fine by me. And irregardless that your posts contain made-up words, I'll try to parse them, infer meaning, and reply accordingly.

But when we're online, we're all writers -- and the more clearly we write, the better we'll be able to understand each other. I understand that writing well puts a slight amount of strain on your body compared to simply mashing the keys and hitting "Post" -- but I think it's well worth it.

Case in point, from this very thread:

I know proper punctuation,grammar and spelling are considered by some to be a sign of intellegence but it could also be because english is not the persons first language or pure laziness.

See what AcHmed99 did there? When I read that sentence for the first time, this is the meaning that I inferred: "I know that proper grammar is considered a sign of intelligence, but proper grammar could also be because English is not the person's first language, or because it's not the person's first pure laziness."

It follows no logical train-of-thought.

Before you say it, I know: I can step back, re-read the sentence a few times, and figure out that that AcHmed99 meant to say: "I know that proper grammar is considered to be a sign of intelligence, but for a lot of people, English is not their first language. And for many others -- myself included -- we're downright lazy."

But why not just write that way in the first place?

I don't mean to pick on AcHmed99, but that post perfectly illustrates my view: for some reason, as soon as people sit down in front of a computer, they just blurt out their stream-of-conscious thoughts, and then leave us all in the dust to try to parse the derailed-freight-train-of-thought logic. I've found that technical discussions are particularly unforgiving -- proper grammar helps remove ambiguity, which is always a good thing when talking about complex shit.

I've never corrected someone's grammar on here (I'm sorry, but requesting that the official title of a board be spelled correctly is not the same thing as correcting bad grammar on someone's post), and I totally understand -- and admire -- people who come on here who don't speak English as a first language (I couldn't imagine going on a Japanese or Polish forum and trying to make sense of anything, so major props to you non-native English speakers!).

But I think we could all be a little more clear when we communicate on here -- and I, for one, could learn some pith while I'm at it, as this post has gone far beyond the length I anticipated!

[deephaven]

Is "--" valid punctuation?

[ElektroQuark]

Thank you funkathustra!

Non native English "speaker" here. Look at my signature.

Thank you again.

[mathsquid]

Is "--" valid punctuation?

Yes.  It's equivalent to a dash.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Encoding_and_keyboard_shortcuts.

[deephaven]

Is "--" valid punctuation?

Yes.  It's equivalent to a dash.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Encoding_and_keyboard_shortcuts.

That's something I've learnt today, thank you.

[Bassman59]

Is "--" valid punctuation?

Yes.  It's equivalent to a dash.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Encoding_and_keyboard_shortcuts.

To add even more pedantry to this thread, it's an en-dash, which is longer than the standard hyphen, but shorter than an em-dash (---).

Clarification can be found at CMOS, an acronym which has a different meaning from the one with which we are all familiar!