I came across this little comment in an email debate on the Libertarian Alliance Forum, from Rob Worsnop, which seems to me to be fraught with educational implications, and to be worthy of wider circulation:
I have a simple, time-saving rule for usenet and mailing lists: Ignore all correspondents who refuse to use upper-case and vaguely correct grammar. Most of the time, someone who isn't capable of organising a simple sentence is equally incapable of organising his thoughts.I see this principle at work many times in my professional life. People who write garbled e-mails are rarely good programmers.
I agree, especially about the neglect of capital letters.
One of the most deeply embedded memes in Western culture just now is that being verbal fluency (UPDATE: see comments!) is evidence of dishonesty, that it serves as a mask behind which evil thoughts and plans may be hidden, while mumbling and hesitating when trying to express oneself is evidence of openness, guilelessness and all-round moral excellence, and that complete silence is even better. Think of all those fluent, posh, English actors, who make a handsome living playing Hollywood villains. And think of their antagonists who let their guns and fists do the talking.
Perhaps this is what causes people deliberately to set aside whatever grasp of grammar that they possess when battling it out on the Internet. They adopt a false pose of mental confusion, in order to seem honest! Complete silence doesn't work in email ratfights, but incoherence is the next best thing if you want to be thought honest and authentic.
Worsnip's point is somewhat different. He is talking about people who can't rather than who won't express themselves grammatically. But the two ideas are pretty closely linked. Anyone who thinks that grammar is wicked is liable to think that computer programming is wicked also and not to want to do that well either.
How is
"...being verbal fluency is evidence of dishonesty..."
supposed to be parsed?
(If it wasn't a piece about grammar and all that, I wouldn't have bothered asking.)
in the week or so that i have been familliar with your blog i have found it quite a good read with only the expected incoherence that would rise from putting thoughts out covering such a range on a daily basis. however, this post is nonsense.
first, the theory it rises out of, though interesting and clearly compelling to some, just does not hold any water in my experience. second, if you were to transfer that theory to writing, i believe it would translate to mass of writing just as well as to clarity, meaning that you, brian, are a dishonest lad due to your voluminous musings - an idea that i am not yet ready to subscribe to. third, i don't yet understand what it means to you to be (or have your education musings be) "libertarian inclined"; it points to the tenuous logic most libertarians embrace. meaning, arguing against
Andy:
Oh dear. I have no leg to stand on here. In the normal course of things I would, if I noticed such a slip, correct it. Now, it must stay in all its horror.
You can't win them all.
And jonk (I defer to you in the non-capitalised spelling of your name):
Why DON'T you use capitals in things like blog comments? I'm genuinely interested. What is it you don't like about capitals? Because from where I sit, the absence of them definitely makes it a little harder to read and to understand what you say.
And the other thing I have to say is that, frankly, I found your comment ... rather incoherent, and as such an illustration of the truth of Worsnip's original statement. I don't think that either clarity or mass of writing are evidence of dishonesty. I try to be clear. I try to be grammatical, although as Andy woundingly but justly pointed out, I do not always succeed! And, I write quite a lot of stuff. And, I hope, I'm honest.
As for "meaning, arguing againt", no disrespect but what are you saying? That libertarians argue against meaning? I truly can't work it out. Further ammunition for Worsnop.
As to the libertarianism of it all, I believe that the consent principle ought to apply to education just it ought to apply to everything else, with the exception of such things as apprehending criminals. Teachers shouldn't be forced to teach pupils they can't tolerate, and pupils shouldn't be forced to be taught by teachers they can't tolerate. I believe in trying to apply the consent principle both to the adult purchasers of education for their children, and to children themselves. These are hard ideals to aim for, because current reality is so different, but that's what I'd like to see.
I don't go on about such things all the time, and maybe rather less during the last few days. There are many other interesting things to say about education besides banging on about consent all the time. But these are themes that I do regularly emphasise here. Does that answer the question? I hope so.
Anyway, thanks for the comment, and I hope you keep coming here from time to time, despite any disagreements we may have.
on capitals. i have a history of being contrarian. years ago i decided to pick on the convention of capitals in the realm of online writing. when writing professionally i tend to revert to the standard. i have heard from one other person that my lack of capitals makes reading difficult - not sure if the many others have kept quiet, turned away, or not been bothered. the other fellow was easily dismissed because i held him in otherwise low regard.
on my incoherence. not sure what to say to this. i was being brief because i felt that you, and your readers would understand what i was citing. and the end of my post "meaning, arguing against" was cut short due to the word limit - i was feeling like leaving this incoherence a symbol of my being slightedly cut off. i guess i would need you to clarify what you do not understand in my critique to better address this issue.
you state that you do not feel "that either clarity or mass of writing are evidence of dishonesty", which i suspected you would not believe. but, you suggest this theory is used by folks who lazily write online to gain credibility in the honesty department. i was trying to get you to acknowledge that you were trying to have it both ways.
also, you cite me as writing "meaning, arguing againt", which i address above, but wonder if your mistype of "againt" was internalized by you as something i had actually written and meant as a critique of my alleged mis-spell. i had meant to begin discussing ideological inconsistencies i often spot libertarians making, which i could get into if anyone is interested.
thought i had another comment to make - but don't.
i do much enjoy your posts, they are very thoughtful and often well-reasoned.
night.
I care greatly about the quality and coherence of my English, and I am very concerned with my language being as easy to read and as easy to follow as possible. I do find that producing a large volume of writing does affect this somewhat. When I am writing something, I am often so relieved to have finished the piece (particularly when it is late at night and I am eager to go to bed) that I post it without rereading it first. This means inevitably that it will contain a few typos, sentences containing the same clause at both the start and the end ("On the contrary, I think that Chomsky's linguistic work is quite interesting, on the contrary") or instances when I have typed a homophone of what I entended to type (there instead of their, or similar). These errors are instantly recognisable to me if I read the post back before posting it, but I do not always do this.
I don't find writing multiple drafts dramatically improves the quality of anything I write: I am good at structuring an argument correctly the first time.
I am not sure that verbal fluency and honesty are that well connected. At least some people can be verbally very fluent at dishonest arguments, and some people can only be clear when they believe what they are saying. Certainly, though, I think verbal fluency and clear thinking are connected. Verbal fluency and concern with details are also connected. I agree with the statement that computer programmers are generally very concerned with the precision of their English as well.
I concur with everything Michael says from "I care greatly ..." to "... I do not always do this."
As this posting shows all too painfully, I do not always achieve the virtue (grammatical correctness) that I aspire to, but the above is why, not a belief that this virtue is not really a virtue. I shoot high, but regularly fall short.
Unlike Michael, though, I think it desirable to correct such things when I spot them. Only if, as here, my errors have become the basis of further comment, would this be wrong. Michael, do you still follow this rule of leaving postings absolutely as posted the first time?
As to Michael's further point, my original posting was not the claim that fluency is always honest, but the more modest claim that "fluency is a sign of dishonesty" is why lots of people deliberately avoid fluency. My posting was about the possible influence of a theory, not about its truth, although I do, incidentally, think it false.
i didn't read michael saying he intentionally does not correct things - is this miscommunication due to unclear writing or reading? if reading, does this then reflect poorly on the reader or writer? likewise for reading non-capitalized writing.
as to the original theory, though we all seem to agree it is bogus, i am willing to go one step further to claim that it is not reasonable to assume that lazy and unclear writers have this understanding about language - this is where my critique began, i think this is a poor (and lazy) assumption.
this discussion has lead to the point that judith butler and many others have raised about the merits of obfuscated language. i believe the basic argument for obfuscation is two-pronged. first, clear writing promotes lazy reading (witness above;). second, difficult writing not only promotes closer reading, but furthers the progress of humanity in that it tests limits. (this is my simplification of the argument, and i do not mean for it to represent butler.)
jonk
Michael didn't say that (about not correcting postings) here. I just happen to know that this is, or was, his policy for his blog, from reading his blog. This you can get to by clicking on his name in his comment above.
Nor do I guess that all those who are incoherent do it because of the theory I sketch, merely some.
My policy is not (and actually never has been) to leave postings absolutely as originally posted. If I see typos and small gramatical errors later, then I do correct them. Again, I tend to have my mind more on the next post than the last one, which is why typos are sometimes still there days or weeks after the original posting. I am more likely to fix gramatical errors (and also the "homophone problem") than I am simple typos, simply because I am less embarrassed by simple typos. I am not terribly bothered if my readers think I occasionally hit the wrong key when typing. I am quite embarassed if they think I don't know the difference between whether, weather, and wether. (Also, in my last job I had an editor who would fix these sorts of problems for me before anything was set to my clients).
My policy (which I mentioned on my blog, and which is probably what you are thinking of) is that if I detect a major error, or an error of fact of any kind in a posting, or if I decide I want to say something in addition to what I already said, then I never change the text of the original posting, but I instead put a correction or additional comment at the bottom of the posting. I think it is somewhat dishonest to hide your previous ignorance by changing something you said with last week's date on it, so I don't do this. In the case of small grammatical errors, or similar, I think making a correction without comment is fair, however.
In the last paragraph I was attempting to address the "fluency is a sign dishonesty" argument, just not directly. My point is that I don't think the two things are generally connected. In some ways, people who are honest but do not think clearly and speak fluently are the most difficult people to deal with, particularly when they are not aware of this. (I am thinking of someone I used to work with, but this may have relevance to your post on Robert Mugabe's niece on Samizdata, Brian).
I think obfuscated writing (where the same thing could be said more simply) is generally a bad thing. If you are going to require more effort from the reader, you should do this by adding detail, not obfuscation. (There are not the same thing). In my opinion, the true test of being able to write well (at least in a non-fiction context) is to be able to explain a subject clearly without eliminating the subtlety and complexity from what you are saying.
For instance, I loathe being asked to reduce what I am saying to five bullet points to be put on a Powerpoint presentation. Too many people think that the way to explain a complicated subject is to remove all the details and render what you are saying into something superficial that is close to being meaningless. (I have been known to describe point form as a tool for the semi-literate, which is perhaps a little harsh, but only a little). This is not true. If you do this what you end up doing is giving the reader a few superficial pieces of knowledge, without any understanding of how they are connected. What you should aim to do is to explain things in such a way that the concepts and subtleties are still there, but where what you have written is still easily understood. This is hard, but I consider myself to be quite good at it.
Being in favour of reducing things to point form is similar to believing that mathematics is about memorising formulas, when it is actually about understanding the concepts behind the formulas. If you can do this, the formulas pop out by themselves.
Jonk
Re.
"third, i don't yet understand what it means to you to be (or have your education musings be) "libertarian inclined"; it points to the tenuous logic most libertarians embrace. meaning, arguing against"
Sorry, I just don't understand what this means at any level. Please elaborate. I am fascinated.
Julius
