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I have never seen a situation where using a less common spelling or grammar was more distracting than the pedantic tangent it produced.

• schoen 11y ago
  That may be true among native speakers with a roughly similar background, but it's not necessarily true in terms of language varieties and non-native speakers (most likely because the non-native speakers may only recognize one form, or spelling, or construction, or lexeme, and not be able to guess how an alternative is related).
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• scrollaway 11y ago
  I have; I see it very regularly, in fact. I'm sure you'd see it more often as well if you worked in translation engineering...
• dingaling 11y ago
  I've experienced confusion reading corporate documents which contained poor grammar or orthography. As an example of the latter, based loosely on a real example: It is preferred to take the server to run-level 1 then to reboot. So, I telinit 1 followed by shutdown -r now ...? In operational-readiness documents there really must not be any leeway for confusion or ambiguity, yet I've encountered many such examples. The usual retort of 'language evolves!' doesn't hold true in circumstances where a common, unequivocal meaning is required. You'd think programmers would be aware of that, writing strictly-defined grammar all day long!
  • rayiner 11y ago
    That's a fantastic example, thank you.