Devoted to technical writing and technical writers

sourced by JMJF

I am a member of several e-groups, composed mostly of different sets of classmates plus another one delving on matters of a more spiritual nature. Most of what we receive or send, aside from missives or on-line conversations, come in the form of forwards. Giving an allowance for lack of facility in the English language – which I would probably expect from anyone else if I were to try “mightily” to construct readable sentences in French or English – it is amazing how badly most people write these days. It becomes more glaring when one realizes that a substantial portion of these forwards come from so-called “English speaking” countries.

In some cases, a person expresses some thoughts that he passes on to people close to him. He then thinks that the matter is a closed one, unless any of his addressees chooses to answer. What sometimes happens, though, is that one of the parties involved decides that these thoughts are worth sharing with other friends….and so forth. Pretty soon, a pretty wide spectrum of individuals all over the world get to see or read what were meant to be private thoughts. The problem starts when others, through no fault of the original sender, take offense, and begin bombarding everyone with hate mail. Be careful!

There are certain basic texts available anywhere which deal in Punctuation and Style. Some of these are relatively inexpensive. Any one of these texts should be kept handy especially for those who have to communicate regularly with their counterparts or higher-ups in business or similar activity. In previous posts, we highlighted the differences between almost similar words, with such subtle or obvious differences, though, that their wrong use could constitute an insult to the recipient. We will continue making posts like these to help people who may be wading with difficulty through the morass of the English language. For example, when should one use the word Principle and not the similar-sounding Principal? That is the subject of the next post.