Grammatical credibility
I read a post last night from an alt-right account talking about immigration. I read it because it was resteemed by someone followed and I was interested in the context. As can be expected, the article was critical of the immigrant involved and the laws that allowed them to achieve the position etc. This is not about the article though, it is about the writing involved.
The author of the article has written a piece of such poor quality, at times it was hard to decipher the meaning of sentences. There were grammatical errors such as 'there' instead of 'they're' and long strings of words without commas. In fact, there is not one comma in the entire text. Quite a feat considering the sentence structure.
This is a problem though, as regardless of what I think about the content, it loses all credibility under the assumption that the writer is a native speaker. That is a large assumption perhaps but, considering the content of the blog, not a great leap.
When it comes to reading the content of non-native speakers, I am very forgiving on a whole host of grammatical errors as well as spelling, word choice and structure but, when it comes to natives, I am a lot less so. This is especially true when a writer is trying to argue for or against a position because poor grammar hints at their level of either education or, the amount of care they are putting into their work.
In my opinion, it is hard to gain credibility as someone who has thought well through the details of a situation if one is blind to their own grammatical mistakes. Yes, mistakes happen but, how many are allowable in one article of three paragraphs?
I am no grammar expert and I make my fair share of typos and the like however, I do try to put something forward that has the chance of passing a year ten, high school English test. Again, this is not critical of the non-native speakers but I hope that all people do at least review the work they put forward.
How something is written tells a lot about a person and affects the credibility of the information provided. You may not agree but, presentation does matter and if good information is presented poorly, it is going to affect the audience. I am not saying the article I read contained good information though.
What I actually find incredible here is how brilliant some of the non-native speakers are in their writing. It could be that they take extra care in their articles but, it is the same when in chat on the fly. It points to how lazy I myself am considering I have lived in a country for 15 years where I do not speak the language and it is one my 18 month old daughter will speak as a native.
English speakers are spoiled when it comes to their ability to communicate globally which makes their failures all the more obvious. One doesn't need to be able to write the next Great American Novel but, basic grammatical structure would go a long way in being able to better position arguments.
The internet is full of very simple grammar lessons and with small a amount of attention and practice, people can become much better writers. How come so few actually take the time?
Perhaps more native English speakers should 'Learn the language'.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
Yeah, loads of people (English speaking people) continually use your instead of you’re, there instead of their and so on. They reply to posts, and write their own, attempting to seem clever, make valid points and build an argument or case to support their view or statement and end up sounding semi-literate.
A little punctuation and correct usage of the English language goes a long way...
It is hard to put forward an argument if it is barely coherent.
Agreed, and even more difficult to reply with any relevance or validity if the person doing to replying hasn’t read the actual post. I had one tonight that replied with something so far off-base...Had obviously not read the post. Senseless.
So does this meme seem to sum up what you experienced?
I agree with you, basic grammatical is fundamental to be credible.
Nice post, I am waiting for you upload more content👌❤
Well said and I thoroughly agree. I read a post a few days ago arguing to the contrary; that even those who dress to impress can be scoundrels and since most are too thick to notice grammatical accuracy, what does it matter? If we all took the anything goes attitude there would soon be no recognisable language to share.
If one is too thick to know the difference it is easy to think that they have missed something in their appraisal of the sources they read from, isn't it? Breitbart was the quoted source. This isn't just about looks, it points to their ability to evaluate content.
Actually the written expression requires special attention in the grammar is the reason why I share your opinion, errors in this affect the ideas that claim to be diffused, you must be careful when writing.
Regards,
P.S. I consider that I do not speak or write English correctly
True. There's absolutely no excuse when one's a native speaker.
Thanks for this plausible correction...you such a wonderful man that is looking for forwardness of this #platform including the steemians... Correcting someone is not an insult, but putting to correction if consider with the writer of the context. Thanks for having you in our midst no knowledge is lost.@tarazkp This the main reason of this platform if i may say
Well I might agree with you, that you are not an English expert but the truth is, even the so called experts also make mistakes. In your sentence above, there was supposed to be a full stop after "the like" and then a comma after "However". But like you said, you are no expert and so you are excused #smiles .
The point is, you might not be able to get you your punctuations correctly or nail the Grammer 100% , but you ability to communicate perfectly with the reader and you comand of sentence usage is actually what I think matters the most since we aren't writing an examination on English language here...lolz
You write pretty well @tarazkp and most times I wish I could write half as good as you do. Remember you are my steemit role model when it comes to writing and presentation of words
The fact that someone is a native is by no means a guarantee that he/she speaks (and especially writes) a better English that a non-native (especially a well-educated one).
I would like to add one curiosity to native / non-native English benefits: some agencies actually prefer proficient non-natives to write for them, because the English of non-native writers uses less jargon and only locally understandable jokes/references. Thus, on a global level, a proficient non-native is often even more understandable than a proficient native.
yes you are right sir i am just trying to learn it .reading your blog gives me some thing daily and that how i am trying to be good ahead.