Excuse me?

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

I started to respond to Michael Smith's essay on "Erudite Digesters", because 
I thought that what he wrote - ("we assume the recipients can spell check the 
results just as easily, if they so desire, taking full responsibility for any 
resulting misunderstandings") could not possibly be what he meant. In any 
normal communication the person expressing the thought must bear at least 
some of the responsibility for expressing his idea with reasonable clarity - 
humorously if he wishes, poetically if he wishes, but if misunderstandings 
result they should not be the full responsibility of the person on the 
receiving end.

I aborted that response because I felt that quite enough had been said 
already, but it seems to be going on. Since I am now in it this far I would 
disagree with Smith's proposition that conventional spelling and proper use 
of language is a recent phenomenon of very little importance. His exemplar, 
Shakespeare (as Chaucer before him) used the conventions and proprieties (and 
latitudes) of his times exceedingly well; he was not trying 2 B kwaint.

Doug Sedon's post in AD7-1236 contained one paragraph that I found very 
telling: that when he replied specifically to a post from Luca, whose native 
language is not English, he "made a conscious effort to go back & correct all 
my 'murricun homilies that coulda confused the poor soul.  i figger that's 
reasonable - *he* had specific questions - if i wanna help him, mite as well 
try to make it understandable for him." I understand that "'murricun 
homilies" was picked up from Biba's parody of Doug's style, but Doug has here 
acknowledged that he has a very different attitude to one specific individual 
foreigner than he does to the World audience generally. That seems somewhat 
odd.

This whole brouhaha started way back in AD7-1227 when I questioned a couple 
of postings which were conventionally spelled, conventionally punctuated, 
conventionally capitalized, fully grammatical, but still unintelligible (to 
me) because they omitted any clear clues to the questions they were 
answering. I sincerely hope that I did not chase away the person who had 
posted them. If I did, I apologize, and hope that he will rejoin the fold.

And I hope this thread peters out pretty quickly-

Good night - -

John

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