9 ms·

I think it's a fair, but just to simplify the argument: Poor grammar often is an artifact of a person being inexperienced with reading, writing, or both. Eith

I think it's a fair, but just to simplify the argument: Poor grammar often is an artifact of a person being inexperienced with reading, writing, or both. Either that or a sign of an unwillingness to learn. Both of these are red flags when hiring. On the other hand, if your "zero tolerance" policy includes things like my usage of an oxford comma, chances are I don't want to work for you.

einhverfr 14y ago
Dude, I so want to go there, apply, and write at the bottom of the page: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." -- And that's the law of the land. Please try to parse that until your head explodes. Edit: I think I would add to that "Also, in your opinion does this mean that once you have been in the country for 14 years you are no longer eligible to be President?"
- praptak 14y ago
  Combining "not" with "and" or "or" leads to ambiguity - there are no operator precedence rules in spoken language. I remember a "eating and drinking forbidden in the lab" notice with "not (eat or drink) == not eat or not drink" scribbled underneath (in math notation).
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    Also notice comma placement, which makes the citizenship requirement very interesting to try to parse. Is there anyone alive today who qualifies?
    - excuse-me 14y ago
      Which is why you should avoid commas in legal documents and especially patents
- leephillips 14y ago
  This is crystal-clear to me. What's the problem?
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    By Contemporary Standard American English standards comma placements are strewn throughout the sentence with very little regard for clarity (removing a few would make it clearer), and the logical relation between clauses leaves something to be desired.
    - aggronn 14y ago
      Are you proposing that the constitution be re-written for grammar every couple of decades?
      - einhverfr 14y ago
        No, but it isn't even clear that the Constitution obeyed perfectly the standards of spelling and grammar of "it's" day.
        adavies42 14y ago
        is it clear that there were any such standards?
        huxley 14y ago
        Standards for comma usage weren't established until almost the end of the 19th century. Some people used breathing or personal stylistics to decide on comma use, but there certainly was no general expectation that it would follow grammatical construction or logic. Compared to some other 18th century documents I've read, the US Constitution is downright spare with commas.
    - rprasad 14y ago
      However, by the standards of English then in effect, it makes perfect sense. Part of the problem is that written English prior to the 1900s included a large element of (conscious or subconscious) verbalization of what was written. Try reading the Constitution out loud, taking appropriate breaks at the punctuation. It becomes a lot easier to understand and read; most (but not all) of the ambiguity will disappear.
- rprasad 14y ago
  No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States (at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution), shall be eligible to the Office of President. Neither shall any person be eligible to that Office [of the President] who shall not have attained to: - the Age of thirty five Years, and - been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. There, fixed it for you. It's not that difficult to understand when you know how legal parsing works. In this case, the use of two subordinate clauses at the end of the first sentence indicates that the first subordinate clause is subordinate to the phrase before it, while the second subordinate clause is subordinate to the ("super") clause preceding the third clause. The super clause consists of the first and second clauses, because they are joined by a coordinating conjunction.
  - im3w1l 14y ago
    What about this parsing of your text? No Person except [ [a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States] (at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution) ] shall be eligible to the Office of President.
  - praptak 14y ago
    The canons of statutory interpretation forbid absurd, unreasonable or unjust interpretations. I believe that ultimately this is what lets the courts discard the odd parse trees.
irahul 14y ago
Saving the google search for people who don't know what an oxford comma is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma "Portugal, Spain, and France" (Oxford comma) "Portugal, Spain and France" (Not Oxford comma)
- jfoutz 14y ago
  Even oxford discourages its use in public writing. http://www.ox.ac.uk/public_affairs/services_and_resources/style_guide/punctuation.html http://www.ox.ac.uk/public_affairs/services_and_resources/st...
  - nmcfarl 14y ago
    But the Chicago Manual of Style encourages its use - this isn’t a closed book. Which the wikipedia article points out.
  - tokenadult 14y ago
    I think that's because the term "Oxford comma" is somewhat of a misnomer. The comma before "and" actually seems to be more preferred in the United States that in Britain. "Opinions vary among writers and editors on the usage or avoidance of the serial comma. In American English, the serial comma is standard usage in non-journalistic writing that follows the Chicago Manual of Style. . . . It is used less often in British English,[5][6] where it is standard usage to leave it out, with some notable exceptions such as Fowler's Modern English Usage." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma
  - sigkill 14y ago
    I prefer to use oxford comma where I'm writing a long list of items, and those items contain sets within themselves. For instance, while listing computer brands that include Dell, HP, Acer, Toshiba, Alienware, Compaq and ASUS, I wouldn't use the oxford comma. But if I'm listing out speaker brands like Bose, Klipsch, JBL, Bang and Olufsen, and Altec Lansing, I think oxford comma helps to clarify the meaning intended.
nollidge 14y ago
Right, that was one thing I thought of. Is he testing just for actual grammar rules like verb conjugation and such, or is he also including superficial style rules like "avoid the passive" or typographic things like how many spaces after a period?
bane 14y ago
It probably depends if he's one of so many ignorant "grammar nazis" that don't understand how language works. Once you wade through the thin veneer of rule vomit, most prescriptivists have little to no clue about the language they are enforcing -- only demonstrating an ability to remember lists of uninformed, anachronistic and often ignorant rule sets that are usually intended for application in a specific milieu. They're usually foolish enough to then go and demonstrate this nonsensical approach in public. Usually as a pedantic and insufferably pretentious, high-friction social interaction: correcting minor typos, misapplying and enforcing meaningless rules, "correcting" conversational and idiomatic prose into stilted formal styles (thereby losing nuance and ultimately meaning). They then claim that it's important they do this because language is used to communicate, but they then demonstrate an almost perfect ability to use language in a non-communicative fashion. On the other hand, even descriptivists can get a little frustrated when "too" and "to" are mixed up; "their", "there" and "they're" are conflated; "its" and "it's" are misused, and so on. It does demonstrate somebody who is unfamiliar with handling the language in the written form, but indeed the correlation between intelligence and understanding the complex English grammar in its fullness are undeniably low. It may simply be that a programmer with poor grammar has spent more time handling code (which also happens to be a milieu with very clear right and wrong feedback mechanisms for incorrect syntax and structure) than in handling written language. Feynman for example, wrote very little prose of his own. tl;dr This employment tests only filters for people who have spent a great deal of time handling language and provides almost no information on their time handling code.

einhverfr 14y ago

Dude, I so want to go there, apply, and write at the bottom of the page: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." -- And that's the law of the land. Please try to parse that until your head explodes. Edit: I think I would add to that "Also, in your opinion does this mean that once you have been in the country for 14 years you are no longer eligible to be President?"

praptak 14y ago
Combining "not" with "and" or "or" leads to ambiguity - there are no operator precedence rules in spoken language. I remember a "eating and drinking forbidden in the lab" notice with "not (eat or drink) == not eat or not drink" scribbled underneath (in math notation).
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Also notice comma placement, which makes the citizenship requirement very interesting to try to parse. Is there anyone alive today who qualifies?
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    Which is why you should avoid commas in legal documents and especially patents
leephillips 14y ago
This is crystal-clear to me. What's the problem?
- einhverfr 14y ago
  By Contemporary Standard American English standards comma placements are strewn throughout the sentence with very little regard for clarity (removing a few would make it clearer), and the logical relation between clauses leaves something to be desired.
  - aggronn 14y ago
    Are you proposing that the constitution be re-written for grammar every couple of decades?
    - einhverfr 14y ago
      No, but it isn't even clear that the Constitution obeyed perfectly the standards of spelling and grammar of "it's" day.
      - adavies42 14y ago
        is it clear that there were any such standards?
      - huxley 14y ago
        Standards for comma usage weren't established until almost the end of the 19th century. Some people used breathing or personal stylistics to decide on comma use, but there certainly was no general expectation that it would follow grammatical construction or logic. Compared to some other 18th century documents I've read, the US Constitution is downright spare with commas.
  - rprasad 14y ago
    However, by the standards of English then in effect, it makes perfect sense. Part of the problem is that written English prior to the 1900s included a large element of (conscious or subconscious) verbalization of what was written. Try reading the Constitution out loud, taking appropriate breaks at the punctuation. It becomes a lot easier to understand and read; most (but not all) of the ambiguity will disappear.
rprasad 14y ago
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States (at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution), shall be eligible to the Office of President. Neither shall any person be eligible to that Office [of the President] who shall not have attained to: - the Age of thirty five Years, and - been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. There, fixed it for you. It's not that difficult to understand when you know how legal parsing works. In this case, the use of two subordinate clauses at the end of the first sentence indicates that the first subordinate clause is subordinate to the phrase before it, while the second subordinate clause is subordinate to the ("super") clause preceding the third clause. The super clause consists of the first and second clauses, because they are joined by a coordinating conjunction.
- im3w1l 14y ago
  What about this parsing of your text? No Person except [ [a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States] (at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution) ] shall be eligible to the Office of President.
- praptak 14y ago
  The canons of statutory interpretation forbid absurd, unreasonable or unjust interpretations. I believe that ultimately this is what lets the courts discard the odd parse trees.

irahul 14y ago

Saving the google search for people who don't know what an oxford comma is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma "Portugal, Spain, and France" (Oxford comma) "Portugal, Spain and France" (Not Oxford comma)

jfoutz 14y ago
Even oxford discourages its use in public writing. http://www.ox.ac.uk/public_affairs/services_and_resources/style_guide/punctuation.html http://www.ox.ac.uk/public_affairs/services_and_resources/st...
- nmcfarl 14y ago
  But the Chicago Manual of Style encourages its use - this isn’t a closed book. Which the wikipedia article points out.
- tokenadult 14y ago
  I think that's because the term "Oxford comma" is somewhat of a misnomer. The comma before "and" actually seems to be more preferred in the United States that in Britain. "Opinions vary among writers and editors on the usage or avoidance of the serial comma. In American English, the serial comma is standard usage in non-journalistic writing that follows the Chicago Manual of Style. . . . It is used less often in British English,[5][6] where it is standard usage to leave it out, with some notable exceptions such as Fowler's Modern English Usage." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma
- sigkill 14y ago
  I prefer to use oxford comma where I'm writing a long list of items, and those items contain sets within themselves. For instance, while listing computer brands that include Dell, HP, Acer, Toshiba, Alienware, Compaq and ASUS, I wouldn't use the oxford comma. But if I'm listing out speaker brands like Bose, Klipsch, JBL, Bang and Olufsen, and Altec Lansing, I think oxford comma helps to clarify the meaning intended.

nollidge 14y ago

Right, that was one thing I thought of. Is he testing just for actual grammar rules like verb conjugation and such, or is he also including superficial style rules like "avoid the passive" or typographic things like how many spaces after a period?

bane 14y ago

It probably depends if he's one of so many ignorant "grammar nazis" that don't understand how language works. Once you wade through the thin veneer of rule vomit, most prescriptivists have little to no clue about the language they are enforcing -- only demonstrating an ability to remember lists of uninformed, anachronistic and often ignorant rule sets that are usually intended for application in a specific milieu. They're usually foolish enough to then go and demonstrate this nonsensical approach in public. Usually as a pedantic and insufferably pretentious, high-friction social interaction: correcting minor typos, misapplying and enforcing meaningless rules, "correcting" conversational and idiomatic prose into stilted formal styles (thereby losing nuance and ultimately meaning). They then claim that it's important they do this because language is used to communicate, but they then demonstrate an almost perfect ability to use language in a non-communicative fashion. On the other hand, even descriptivists can get a little frustrated when "too" and "to" are mixed up; "their", "there" and "they're" are conflated; "its" and "it's" are misused, and so on. It does demonstrate somebody who is unfamiliar with handling the language in the written form, but indeed the correlation between intelligence and understanding the complex English grammar in its fullness are undeniably low. It may simply be that a programmer with poor grammar has spent more time handling code (which also happens to be a milieu with very clear right and wrong feedback mechanisms for incorrect syntax and structure) than in handling written language. Feynman for example, wrote very little prose of his own. tl;dr This employment tests only filters for people who have spent a great deal of time handling language and provides almost no information on their time handling code.