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It feels so narrow, almost like the author hasn't met enough people in their life. People get grammar wrong all the time for many different reasons that are no
by jraph 4y ago
It feels so narrow, almost like the author hasn't met enough people in their life.
People get grammar wrong all the time for many different reasons that are not always "logical": tiredness, loss of focus, focus elsewhere (on the actual content, for instance), dys-something, lack of sleep, something else. And for some reasons, it's not always easy to spot our own mistakes when proofreading. But that's a very well-known fact.
I myself make a lot of mistakes when writing even when I'm pretty sensitive to grammar and pretty good at it. And many very clever people don't seem to be wired for liking / being sensitive to grammar as much as I am.
By not hiring people who make grammar mistakes, you are missing out on great people. Your loss, I guess.
I guess it makes sense to hire people able to write well in writing jobs, but even then, if you need error-free texts, the only way is proofreading by other people and good tooling. So… unless the person does a lot of mistakes without being able to fix them… meh?
Also, I very much prefer reading a text full of mistakes but of which I can follow the logic, than an error-free text that I can't follow.
Maybe a better solution is to make society more tolerant to mistakes when reading? Saying this as somebody who' reading is easily disrupted by writing errors in others' writings.
- PebblesRox 4y agoI wish there was an easy way to correct typos online for the sake of the next person. I understand that this would open the door wide for abuse, but I can dream, right?
- jraph 4y agoIt occurred to me too. Something like a browser extension, that would have a database of fixes and/or automatic submission to the author so they can fix it. But the drawbacks might unfortunately make it not worth the effort indeed (people can get easily offended, the extension could have privacy issues, could be abused, etc). Years ago I had developed a small module so people could submit fixes to my website. It's not up anymore. In the end, many people don't care that much too.