10 ms·

Privilege is bad grammar

337 points by surprisetalk 9mo ago

written-beyond 9mo ago
Never thought of it that way, very interesting insight. I always thought those "K circle back" emails were fake but nope looks like they're very real.
saghm 9mo ago
At one of my previous jobs some of my coworkers and I had an in-joke about how it was possible to tell which of the emails from the CEO were written directly by him or not based on whether it used the spelling "pls" for "please" because of how often he liked to use it. It hadn't occurred to me to view this phenomenon in the way that the article does, but at least in my experience it certainly seems to be accurate.
- hnlmorg 9mo ago
  A CEO saying “please”, regardless of how it’s spelt, is itself an anomaly ;)
  - titanomachy 9mo ago
    He’s saying half the word, at least… pretty good for a CEO.
  - PinkSheep 8mo ago
    I remember people complaining about how some can't write out a full "thanks" instead of "thx"
StevenWaterman 9mo ago
This is almost textbook countersignalling. The same as: - Signalling: I dress more formally than everyone else to make up for the fact I'm less professional in other ways - No signalling: I dress like everyone else because I am like everyone else - Countersignalling: I wear ratty old clothes with holes in them, and nobody will dare to question it because I'm the important one here
- bonoboTP 9mo ago
  On the positive side of this, research papers by competent people read very clearly with readable sentences, while those who are afraid that their content doesn't quite cut it, litter it with jargon, long complicated sentences, hoping that by making things hard, they will look smart. But to expand on the spelling topic, good spelling and grammar is now free with AI tools. It no longer signals being educated. Informal tone and mistakes actually signal that the message was written by a human and the imperfections increase my trust in the effort spent on the thing.
  - crassus_ed 9mo ago
    >Informal tone and mistakes actually signal that the message was written by a human and the imperfections increase my trust in the effort spent on the thing. Isn’t this a bit short sighted? So if someone has a wide vocabulary and uses proper grammar, you mistrust them by default?
    - bonoboTP 9mo ago
      Not necessarily but it carries less weight than pre-LLMS. Obviously it's just a heuristic and not the whole story and telltale AI signs are not purely about good spelling and grammar. But I just appreciate some natural, human texture in my correspondence these days.
    - tryauuum 9mo ago
      a vocabulary of certain width raises a question "does this creature understand the words it is using?". So yeah I mistrust them more
    - coldtea 9mo ago
      >Isn’t this a bit short sighted? So if someone has a wide vocabulary and uses proper grammar, you mistrust them by default? Yes, people, in general, do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_gjWlW0kRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_gjWlW0kRs
      - 9mo ago
swe_dima 9mo ago
Definitely my experience as well. Another dimension to this is native vs 2nd language speakers. For those of us who had to learn English, we put a lot of effort into grammar, while native speakers whip out half-baked sentences without a second thought.
robmusial 9mo ago
> It's almost as if, once you get to a certain level of power, you no longer need to try. Correct. I think it's also a bit of a shibboleth now, like not wearing a suit. In former days the lower ranked employees wore jeans, t-shirts, hoodies, etc. and the bosses all wore suits and ties. Now it's the opposite at least in tech. If you see someone in "business" attire, you know they're middle management or sales and have no power, where if someone is in a tshirt and jeans they're probably a founder or executive. It's a flex to dress casual.
- rsynnott 9mo ago
  > Now it's the opposite at least in tech. If you see someone in "business" attire, you know they're middle management or sales and have no power, where if someone is in a tshirt and jeans they're probably a founder or executive. It's a flex to dress casual. Eh? I've been working in tech for over 20 years. For all of that time, most people wore casual clothes.
bananaflag 9mo ago
What is sad is that these people from the start think of good grammar as an effort to "look professional" (which they can then discard), and not as an effort to be clear, an effort which fits into the basic respect one gives other people.
- undeveloper 9mo ago
  who is "these people"
  - bananaflag 9mo ago
    the ones writing those emails with bad grammar
    - Nevermark 9mo ago
      That was not clear to me either. But, given that clarification, I agree!
  - rexpop 9mo ago
    The psychopaths who rise to the top of capitalism.[0][1] 0. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-science-behind-why-so-many-successful-millionaires-are-psychopaths-and-why-it-doesnt-have-to-be-a-bad-thing.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-science-behind-why-so-ma... 1. https://www.newsweek.com/ceo-dark-personality-success-machiavellian-psychology-2087839 https://www.newsweek.com/ceo-dark-personality-success-machia...
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- snikeris 9mo ago
  This is a good point. Perhaps the poor attempt at grammar indicates a lack of empathy, which is a trait the Epstein-adjacent share.
- Telemakhos 9mo ago
  That's what's taught in a lot of linguistics and language classes now: rules of spelling and grammar are power games designed to perpetuate one culture while repressing others, rather than tools for clarifying thought. It's fallout from the postmodern search for power dynamics in all things. A friend recently brought up Orwell's essay on "Politics and the English Language" [0] and the Merriam Webster's Word Matters Podcast episode on it [1]. She had "read" without understanding the former and had listened with credulity to the latter. The podcast savages Orwell for not understanding "how language in general and English in particular actually works" and for his "absolutism" but especially for violating all of his precepts in his essay. Had either my friend or the podcasters bothered to read the essay carefully, they would have found that Orwell explains that he did so deliberately. When I asked my friend to summarize Orwell's essay and distill it to a single thesis, she replied that he was simply prescriptivist and wanted to tell people what to do. That's what the podcast got out of it too. For example, from the podcast: > A big part of the conversations that we've all had with members of the public or strangers, people who correspond with a dictionary in one way or another, is some kind of membership of a club. "You care about language in the way that I do." There is absolutely a huge moral component that is imposed upon that. We always are judging others by their use of language. We are always judged by our use of language, by the way we spell, by the way we pronounce words. That's just a simple human fact. It's easier for us as professionals to separate that from culture. The last sentence reminds me of a feedback loop: the "professionals" claim power based on the fact that they see the exercise of power in language rather than on how to use language for communicating clearly. This is how we get to a point where good grammar is a tool for "looking professional" rather than speaking and writing clearly. I walked my friend back through the actual essay and asked her what Orwell wanted from each point, and she realized that it was, in fact, clarity, not power. Orwell wanted to challenge his readers to think about what they wanted to say before saying it, so that they could say what they meant rather than repeating what they heard commonly said (a note could be made here about large language models and probability). [0] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-matters-podcast/episode-85-orwells-politics-and-the-english-language https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-matters-podcast/episode...
gleipnircode 9mo ago
That fits witj my experiences. And i want to add an otjer layer. In ai times its somtimes even nice to see some typos. You Casn be pretty sure it was not written by ai.
- mikepurvis 9mo ago
  "sent from my iphone"
  - Spivak 9mo ago
    Positive (tryhard) signaling: having a well designed email footer with all your contact info Neutral signaling: no footer at all -1 signaling: sent from my iPhone -2 signaling: sent from my Samsung AI Family Hub 4-Door Flex Fridge
    - rationalist 9mo ago
      I think "Sent from my iPhone" is now less of a status symbol than it is an excuse for short replies / bad grammar.
      - Aloisius 9mo ago
        Status symbol? I just assumed that was from people who aren't technologically literate enough to remove the default signature. It never occurred to me it might be intentional.
  - caminante 9mo ago
    *Please forgive any typos
  - burntalmonds 9mo ago
    There needs to be a new sig like "Written by Claude" or something. I'd rather somebody just openly admits it.
    - 9mo ago
renewiltord 9mo ago
[flagged]
- queenkjuul 9mo ago
  Congratulations on learning a new word
  - relaxing 9mo ago
    [dead]
    - renewiltord 9mo ago
      How sad I’m missing literacy privilege but fortunately looks like I’ve got downvote privilege so that will make up for it. Though, after thinking about it, I have illiteracy privilege so there’s that too.
- glitchc 9mo ago
  Loved your comment, made my day. Thanks!
  - renewiltord 9mo ago
    Why, thank you. It was my pri—<User was banned for this comment>
- thrance 9mo ago
  What else should you call something that is only socially acceptable for a certain group of people to do? I understand word fatigue, but it feels very adequately used here.
  - renewiltord 9mo ago
    [flagged]
queenkjuul 9mo ago
At first i was about to disagree, because i thought, "ah hell nah man I'm sending emojis and shit at work all day" and then i realized, i send emojis and shit to my peers all day (well, and to my dumbass boss who i don't respect). I think about the email i sent that was to be read by the CTO and i not only ensured it was totally correct, i asked a colleague to proofread it.
4rtem 9mo ago
This is why I like to have business with Germans and Japanese, their emails are the best.
bluedino 9mo ago
I had a boss once who had "this is sent from my phone, please excuse any spelling or grammar" as his email signature
- rationalist 9mo ago
  … 'as his Desktop Outlook signature' (Although he could at least use proper grammar in the automated signature line...)
- athenot 9mo ago
  A more appropriate signature would be "Please excuse any auto-correct errors that my ducking phone might have added."
graypegg 9mo ago
Using language "correctly" is one of humanity's oldest class dividers. [citation needed, source: me speculating] If you personally benefit from dividing people into in- and out-groups (most of the time you do), saying you must speak a certain way is a great way to get people to self-identify on one side of that line. (Excluding cases where grammar helps with communication, that's "I don't understand you" versus "you sound poor".) You make it hard enough that someone needs years of expensive education or has to be born in the right family that speaks the right way, and now all we can do it try to meet that arbitrary standard. Everyone will struggle, so the act of calling it out is a choice, rather than a fact. If someone lets that mask slip, IMO it's because they're not worried about being accused of occupying the wrong side of the line, rather than any lack of "trying". Trying sort of implies there is a goal to hit.
zamadatix 9mo ago
Grammar privilege feels 90% understanding the audience and timing vs something like 10% power dynamics. As with most things where there can be a power imbalance, that does not mean those with power (e.g. managers) should not help set expectations on an even field with each of their employees anyways. Nor does it mean the other 10% of cases don't exist, just "don't ignore that 90% of this is probably one being too worried about sounding professional in every possible scenario". Before going into the workforce, we're usually taught professionals are expected to communicate like professionals 100% of the time. It's just the safer bet to make as it's simply a lot harder (though certainly not impossible) to foul things up in a professional situation by having good grammar and well written emails than vice versa. That said, it seems like most people I've ever actually worked with (on any level) do not like communicating 100% professionally the majority of the time (especially in small groups/directly) and may actually consider THAT disrespectful. Some from practicality ("don't waste so much time on an email we could have talked through casually in a minute" etc), some for just having different social expectations ("We've worked together for 3 years, why are you sounding like a door-to-door salesman about to make a pitch to me instead of just saying you had a thought" etc), or a laundry list of other reasons. Telling when and how much professionalism is expected is just something you have to learn to read the individual/crowd for, but it's probably a positive signal a lot less often than the author assumes it usually is.
vonnik 9mo ago
This is so yawn. Do young professionals starting out have to impress their bosses? Yes. Do bosses have to impress them? Usually not. Who cares? Power dynamics exist, it’s easy to play the grammar game, so just do it and stop pretending it’s some form of oppression.
- twoodfin 9mo ago
  TBH, a junior dev pointed at an urgent issue who replies simply, “on it” vs. one who takes the time to write a short book report on their initial analysis and plans is—all else being equal—not a close call when it comes to promotion time. I don’t want to be impressed, I want problems to be solved.
otterley 9mo ago
What I've seen is that leaders often communicate brusquely downward, but formally upward - and the higher the rank, the greater the magnitude (in each direction). I think it's a consequence of having more and more people asking you things (on the downward side), while being responsible for decisions of more critical importance (on the upward side) as you go further up the chain of command.
- AbstractH24 9mo ago
  What makes you think its just "leaders"?
  - otterley 9mo ago
    This response isn’t very helpful. Can you elaborate with your own experience?
parpfish 9mo ago
if i sent an email to my ceo and they replied with typos and bad grammar, i wouldn't think "wow, they are flexing their privilege to be able to do that". i would be excited that i'm being treated as a member of the inner circle and they can speak freely and casually with me.
- zephen 9mo ago
  Some people think texts are for quick one-off messages and emails are for longer more thoughtful missives. But (a) most corporate communication isn't by text, and (b) the CEO is probably from a time when there weren't any texts, so emails themselves were often used casually, in lieu of sticky notes. In any case, I'm with you. The trope of microaggressions is way overused, and applying it to someone who is usefully communicating with you is rubbish.
- jscd 9mo ago
  I can kinda see your point, especially if the meaning is still obvious and the tone is inviting you to participate, but I think you're misunderstanding what "privilege" means here. It isn't a superior "flexing their privilege" over their subordinates. The superior doesn't care. They don't even think about it. Because they have power over you, they can just speak gibberish and you have to figure it out. In my opinion, a good boss should have enough respect for me to not waste my time by forcing me to decipher a thought they didn't even read before sending.
engineer_22 9mo ago
In the United states, at least in my business, we prize congeniality and sincerity. I think part of the trend the author discovered might be that experienced professionals unconsciously use informal language structures to avoid seeming pretentious.
foxwell_1959 9mo ago
Isn’t this more about the specific generation these people represent instead of their privilege?
wolframhempel 9mo ago
I'd put it the other way around: Bad Grammar is a courtesy. I run a startup that's small, but busy. I get a high frequency stream of inbound questions, notifications and asks to make decisions by my team and customers. If I don't respond or decide quickly I become a bottleneck. Likewise, if I wait, things pile up. So, rather than keep everyone waiting for me, I make a point of pulling my phone out as soon as I get a message and provide an answer straight away as much as possible. These answers are brief and to the point. And they are laden with shitty grammar. But they are almost instant and that feels better than a well formulated essay two hours later. Having said that, I started using Gmail's "polish" feature to turn "yes" into "That sounds great, let's go ahead with it" or some such corporatism. Not sure if that's much better...
- bobbiechen 9mo ago
  Speed is a courtesy, sure. I think polish for the sake of polish is bad, and the AI powered polishing is worse. See also: https://x.com/ClickHole/status/2020915972979425699 https://x.com/ClickHole/status/2020915972979425699
- zephen 9mo ago
  > Bad Grammar is a courtesy. I agree. Or at least to the extent that the complaint is that bad grammar signifies dispensing with formality, dispensing with formality is often a courtesy. Too many people have it drilled into them that "If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well" when in reality if a job is worth doing, it is often worth doing very badly indeed, because it really, really just needs to be done. It takes a large amount of very unproductive navel-gazing to assume that a message that unequivocally gives you the information you need, yet that doesn't measure up to your own perceptions of how much effort should have gone into the crafting of the email, is an insult directed at you, rather than a focus on the message rather than the medium. Even if Marshall McLuhan's dictum is correctly applied to this scenario, the message conveyed by the medium could well be "Stop wasting so much time agonizing over phrasing! Just spit it out!" rather than "I'm better than you so I can get away with sloppy shit that I would excoriate you for."
colpabar 9mo ago
It's funny she mentions the horrible grammar in the leaked sony emails because that's what I remember most from it too. This one always gets a laugh from me. https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/33tkv6/actual_leaked_sony_email_about_the_amazing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/33tkv6/actua...
leflambeur 9mo ago
In the country where I grew up, physicians have immense clout and are notorious for writing unintelligibly. I once pointed this out as a kid and was told by the secretary something like: the doctor is too busy to write legible prescriptions.
apparent 9mo ago
I think this isn't quite what "privilege" means, at least these days. People talk about "white privilege" for example, meaning that people who are white can do XYZ or avoid ABC, unlike other people. In the example the author writes about, the privilege is not "being a bag grammar person", it's being a high-ranking person. The bad grammar is the thing that those people are able to get away with. IMO, he's confusing the disease with the symptom, so to speak. Separately, I would say that high-ranking people can definitely get away with short emails, and to some extent brusque emails. Bad grammar is perhaps just the next domino to topple.
- AbstractH24 9mo ago
  Yeah, if they are using the term "privilege" in the way that its used in pop-culture this post lost me.
wilg 9mo ago
I think its probably just having to respond to lots of messages from your phone in the middle of meetings is the job, and you'll quickly decide that getting the point across is the most important thing.
BryanA 9mo ago
I had a boss who would respond with: "NO" or "OK"
- blipvert 9mo ago
  Reminds me of the apocryphal story of Victor Hugo asking his publisher how his new novel was doing with a single “?”. The publisher replied “!”. Do your boss could still save themselves 50% of the work.
- stronglikedan 9mo ago
  I like to ask people what I did to make them yell at me when I get a message with all caps. It usually stops.
PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
Hobbes says that talking to someone with courtesy is honor(giving them relative power), and talking trashy is dishonor(reducing their relative power). Its not very long, but I use this in my daily life: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3207/pg3207-images.html#link2H_4_0071 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3207/pg3207-images.html... I also use the 12 bullet points before that on Power.
kashnote 9mo ago
Maybe someone can clarify this but I was also pretty appalled by the grammar in the Epstein emails until someone pointed out it could be an artifact of OCR or decoding issues. Not sure why they would have to do OCR on emails. Were they printed out? On PDF for some reason? The decoding thing I kinda get but that you can easily point out because of all the equal signs.
mattbee 9mo ago
?
- blipvert 9mo ago
  !
kayo_20211030 9mo ago
I point you to Nancy Mitford's piece (and others) on U vs non-U. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English This was a, tongue in cheek, distinction between the language used by the posh and by the aspiring-posh. It's seems analogous to the OP's sense of boss vs non-boss language and diction, which I believe exists.
vunderba 9mo ago
From the article: > It's almost as if, once you get to a certain level of power, you no longer need to try. It’s relative to the power level difference between the two parties. We’re talking about someone (your boss) who doesn’t really need to present an appearance of professionalism to their proverbial lowly underlings. As slapdash as their response to you might appear - if you were to observe that same person composing a reply to the CEO, I'd wager that all the hallmarks of grammatical precision and professionalism would be back in spades.
dostick 9mo ago
I am more appalled that all those emails have that footer that says - if you’re not intended recipient you should delete immediately. Yet people see it and just copy those emails. No respect for the legal disclaimer. Now they can all be sued for ignoring that legal disclaimer, I suppose they will face justice sooner than all those people in emails.
- zephen 9mo ago
  That footer is legally meaningless. And the companies adding the footer? Their attack lawyers are assholes trying to scare everybody. Fuck them.
chatmasta 9mo ago
> If I had sent out an email with even a quarter of the typos they had, I probably would've lost my job. This probably isn’t true, though. But you didn’t want to test your luck, so you took the safe route of carefully crafting your emails. The privilege is not worrying about being fired over trivial reasons.
illusive4080 9mo ago
It’s because the higher you are in the chain of corporate command, the less time you have to dedicate to each task. You end up with shorter answers to every note because you wouldn’t have time to reply to all notes and do the strategic things you need to do, otherwise. As an individual contributor on a team, you may have to interface at most with 30 people on a weekly basis. As a second line leader you may have 150 people under your purview, and another 50 outsiders you have to talk to. You can’t scale the amount of time you have, so you scale the amount of time you spend on replies.
- _whiteCaps_ 9mo ago
  Shorter answers don't necessitate terrible grammar. Maybe it's because my mom was a teacher and I had good grammar drilled into me, but I feel like it shows respect for the people you're communicating with.
  - makeset 9mo ago
    > respect for the people you're communicating with That is exactly why executive grammar is so bad.
- rbonvall 9mo ago
  That doesn't explain the "punctuating with multiple cryface emojis".
- LambdaComplex 9mo ago
  Using the example from the article: "K let circle back nxt week bout it . thnks" I'm not buying your argument. The amount of additional time that it would have taken to write that same message with proper grammar and spelling is minuscule.
  - arduanika 9mo ago
    The boss was following Strunk & White's advice to omit needless letters.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
daralthus 9mo ago
ppl are so sensitive. it's not impolite to be direct. why would you be wasting each other's time by "dear, sincerely etc" every single time.
- lkey 9mo ago
  y ask q u dunno answer 2?
  - zephen 9mo ago
    To be fair, most questions are asked because the querent does not know the answer. But [that's not what happened here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question)
snickerer 9mo ago
Bad grammar is disrespect. Underlings have to swallow that disrespect. It is just a power game. The next level is simply to insult everyone, and everyone will still remain submissive.
- gzread 9mo ago
  [dead]
- shermantanktop 9mo ago
  And if you insult people, and get rewarded by submission, one reaction is to amp up the insults. After all, you don't know the limits of your power until someone quits. So abuse people, exhibit outlandish public behavior, say racist or otherwise objectionable things...every person who remains on your payroll is a sign of how powerful you are. This is not a common tactic, but it's a highly visible tactic, and it's not hard to find some notable examples out there right now.
- H8crilA 9mo ago
  [flagged]
- mempko 9mo ago
  Except they don't just talk this way with underlings but everyone including their peers.
  - blahaj 9mo ago
    I think the key is whether they expect their underlings to be more formal or if it actually goes both ways.
themafia 9mo ago
> If I had sent out an email with even a quarter of the typos they had, I probably would've lost my job. Who told you that? Or maybe... what state do you work in? I cannot even imagine starting the HR process to fire someone because of bad emails.
- cracki 9mo ago
  HR has a huge bag of tricks. They can fire anyone for anything and nothing.
  - themafia 9mo ago
    > HR has a huge bag of tricks. Yea, one of them is called "actually doing their jobs." In my company they spend far more time mediating problems than they do thinking up clever ways to fire someone without just cause.
tamimio 9mo ago
I used to be super keen about grammar and typos in texts as well, recently, I have been intentionally keeping some mistakes to prove that a human actually wrote that text and wasn’t AI generated, from my personal observation, I found that people now assume any perfectly written text is an AI generated and ended up not reading it all.
calmbonsai 9mo ago
I don't think the author realizes the time*attention triage that happens when your sole corporate responsibility is to manage others. I've noticed a distinct personal trend in "email succinctness" the more people I need to manage. That said, using good grammar is never a bad thing and depending on the subject matter and relationships between the respective communicators, short-hand can be both a deliberate obfuscation practice and social coding of the intimacy of the respective relationships.
azangru 9mo ago
> but grammar privilege? That's certainly a first. Here is what I don't understand, and what is not addressed in the post. After you get a response from your boss that reads, "K let circle back nxt week bout it . thnks", doesn't this free you up to relax your style to your comfort level? If you see that your addressee doesn't seem to care for meticulous style, is there much point in stressing over it (and thus, in continuing with the privilege narrative)?
- freetime2 9mo ago
  Unfortunately there is a double standard at play. When people see a sloppy email from a powerful person, they think “they must be so busy that they don’t have time to check grammar”. But when it comes from a low-level employee they think “oh they must be careless or uneducated”.
  - maxverse 9mo ago
    100%. "Needs more attention to detail."
  - pickleRick243 9mo ago
    except it's sort of true and a reasonable assumption to make? Just as when a master painter makes something that looks "sloppy" to the layman, one immediately assumes there is some deep artistry behind it as opposed to poor technique, whereas when a child does it, one does not extend the same charitable attitude.
    - freetime2 9mo ago
      Sure I think there's some truth the that. You've gotta learn the rules first to know when it's ok break the rules. Somebody with a lot of experience should be able to judge how their message will be received, and what amount of effort is "good enough". Whereas someone with less workspace experience may lack such judgement, and is probably better off erring on the side of "too good" rather than "not good enough". But it's definitely also very much tied to status, power, and privilege. The same people who have no qualms about firing off a sloppy email to their subordinates often spend a lot more effort on emails to their bosses. But even this discrepancy is justified, I think, given that a manager represents their subordinates to the higher ups. And the potential consequences of a bad impression or misunderstanding are more severe when communicating up the chain of command.
ivraatiems 9mo ago
Informality and bad grammar but otherwise sound decision making is fine, I think everyone's arguments for it here make sense. But let's not pretend that, at least in the US, that's what it's limited to. Our current and immediate past president are both elderly men with potentially compromised mental states who regularly say crazy nonsense stuff. Try watching this (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=455169079910588 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=455169079910588) or this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZsdlULgqvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZsdlULgqvA) and then watch the literal crowds of people who are saying "you just don't understand! You're not parsing it right! You're not paying enough attention to their genius!" It's wild that we make excuses like this for people. One has to ask where the line is. This almost certainly happens in business, too - it's just not as obvious because those folks don't have to constantly do it in public.
SLWW 9mo ago
K much to thin bout . thnks Sent from my iPhone
LAC-Tech 9mo ago
There's no high culture anymore. Rich people don't go to operas or read poetry or literature. They drink too much and they can't spell. They're just plebs with money.
VerifiedReports 9mo ago
I don't know where this guy has worked, but I've never worked for anyone who communicates like an ignorant, lazy ass. Also, while I find his criticism valid for having had indeed seen it, this is ironic: "how sloppy and unprofessional emails from executives looked like."
rbanffy 9mo ago
This is a bit in the same direction as Epstein’s horrible tech higiene- using computers with outdated software, little or no cryptography, and so on. Another person summarised it quite well: “too rich to care”.
- asveikau 9mo ago
  Maybe he considered himself beyond prosecution. So he didn't care that he arranged trafficking on Gmail under his real name. Additionally, if Gmail is a problem, Sergey Brin went to his events. In one document drop Joi Ito is asking him about security hygiene and saying he is "worried about his emails".
asveikau 9mo ago
Many people point to the bad spelling and grammar of these powerful, abusive people and they say wow, that's a flex. My own reaction is more like these people are stupid. It's not power that makes them write poorly. They're not capable of getting it right. Look at what Noam Chomsky wrote to Epstein as a contrast. Multiple paragraphs and usually coherent. He makes Epstein look dumb. (Which he was.) I don't support what and to whom Chomsky was writing, but he is better at writing.
- teshigahara 9mo ago
  Exactly. Remember this is a guy who was "best friends" with Donald Trump. It's just a group of idiots who became rich and powerful through a combination of luck and criminality.
- NoGravitas 9mo ago
  The thing is that "being an idiot" would have consequences for you; it doesn't have consequences for them.
  - asveikau 9mo ago
    This isn't black and white. Tons of people face little or no consequences for being idiots, but don't achieve the levels that Epstein did.
paulnpace 9mo ago
*poor
yieldcrv 9mo ago
I latch on to some of these trends by lowercasing everything, in this case I mostly just don’t correct it if I missed a case its more like insulation, the people that criticize it seem less connected and less compensated than me while understanding exactly what was conveyed, and the people like me are the same like “look at this try hard middle manager that doesn’t focus on anything relevant” one thing I do consciously correct is punctuation, I remove periods after consciously typing them, since an entire generation of people considers it a harsh statement, while the lack of period doesn’t confuse anyone else language exists to convey a shared concept
- cracki 9mo ago
  people are scared of periods? ... lmao!
  - mythrwy 9mo ago
    They have replaced them with exclamation marks! Every sentence must end with an exclamation mark, or you aren't excited and positive enough!
  - shmeeed 9mo ago
    Mostly men.
    - yieldcrv 9mo ago
      ba dum tiss
patpatpat 9mo ago
As a poor kid I was deeply insecure about my falling apart shoes, however the wealthier kids would relish taping up their talking shoes like it was a running joke.
w10-1 9mo ago
It's not intelligence, respect, signaling or status. It's saving time, the thing we can't bank or stretch or keep. Doing that reflects value priorities that are likely to lead to success and happiness. We would all be this brief if we weren't constrained otherwise. People who care deeply about their time are this brief even if they shouldn't be. You can even say nothing in ways that influence others in the ways you want (from spiritual teachers and parents to politicians and mafia dons). (Wealth and power trashing is all too easy these days. Pick a hard target?)
- MichaelDickens 9mo ago
  It's both. Saving time is a form of status signaling. Professionalism usually entails spending longer on something than is optimal for effective communication, which is a way of signaling "my time is less valuable than yours". Writing short messages with grammatical errors is a way of signaling "my time is more valuable than your comprehension".
youknownothing 9mo ago
there is also the matter that, at one point, people stop differentiating between communication media, the boundaries between email and texting disappear.
npilk 9mo ago
I wonder if this has implications for AI alignment? Maybe prompting with poor spelling and grammar will make the AI eager to please the privileged, high-power user. (/s)
mempko 9mo ago
I've noticed this too when dealing with people with power. If you want to be seen as a peer, you have to stop caring. It's weird but it's definitely in the culture. As someone who learned English as a second language, it's especially weird since I worked hard to speak and write good English.
skeptrune 9mo ago
Privilege is working at a startup
kingofmen 9mo ago
This is not my experience at all. I have never received an informal email like this from a manager; even chat threads at my job are generally correctly spelled, grammatical, and fully professional. Maybe I'm not talking to sufficiently exalted leadership?
mikkupikku 9mo ago
People who try to flex by using shitty grammar are just exposing themselves as base philistines who can't do it using obscure words and erudite references.
wakawaka28 9mo ago
My eyes are bleeding from trying to read this blog. Please pick less obnoxious colors.
tayo42 9mo ago
The emoji use is general is weird. It's like the flair thing from office space, like everyone tries hard to be quirky or something idk.
throwyawayyyy 9mo ago
Just a random comment but: what a delightful blog. Even though I disagree on the virtues of cats (they really aren't all monsters. Ours is only occasionally evil).
getnormality 9mo ago
What does it have to do with privilege? This person's need for grammar seems to be self-imposed. I don't see where anyone judged him for bad grammar while a privileged person was given a get-out-of-jail-free card for the grammar police.
- didntcheck 9mo ago
  Yep > If I had sent out an email with even a quarter of the typos they had, I probably would've lost my job. I don't know their life, and they may be right, but I think they may well just be imagining it. I also went from excessive formality to short conversational tone as I became more experienced. But it wasn't due to any promotions, but because I realized nobody had ever cared I mean this is a standard cliché even in fictional works: the young new worker who keeps falling over themselves to perform what they think is necessary formality, only to be shown that they can just chill out and act like a human
userbinator 9mo ago
I've seen messages like that from junior employees up to CEOs. I think it's mainly because most people simply can't type and think quickly enough (150-200wpm) that their thoughts naturally become words with next to no effort.
kevinpet 9mo ago
The title of the article cites bad grammar, but the example doesn't have any grammatical problems. It has clear typos and questionable abbreviations but it doesn't have any of the bad grammar signs that grate on me, like comprise vs. compose or over utilization of "utilize" where "use" would do just fine. You might say that "let's circle back" is annoying business jargon, but it is a very common phrase and aside from the typos correctly applied in this example.
wcfrobert 9mo ago
It just occurred to me that I chat with LLMs like I'm a CEO.
tqi 9mo ago
Jesus no wonder 10% of Americans are on SSRIs, if this is the kind of petty stuff people are ruminating on...
daft_pink 9mo ago
I think this is just more how the real world varies from academia. In the working world, few people really care about grammar, but we spend out life growing up in classrooms where teachers critique and be rate us on our grammar.
wind_rider 9mo ago
[dead]
erelong 9mo ago
I think it's just that grammar is independent of getting results; so bosses who might get results might also have bad grammar. Having good grammar doesn't make you any more able to get things done - in other words, someone with bad grammar might be more able to get things fone than someone with good grammar
AbstractH24 9mo ago
Privilege or confidence? The different relationships between those two things is something I never considered until this post.
benzible 9mo ago
Great, detailed explanation of the "weird formatting": https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2026/02/02/whats-up-with-all-those-equals-signs-anyway/ https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2026/02/02/whats-up-with-all-th... (I knew it was "quoted printable" as soon as I saw it but there's a lot more to it).
weirdmantis69 9mo ago
One anecdote about Bill Gates is he was in the Bahamas perhaps to purchase some real estate and he was dressed very down to the point where he looked like a bum. He went into a local real estate office where the lady was dressed in a suit and to the 9's despite it being 40 degrees outside. And she went and told him that real estate was expensive in the Bahamas and he needed a lot of money to buy to which he replied "I might be able to work something out you never know". So ya the super rich don't need to sound good or look good they simply have money.
gsck 9mo ago
I kinda went through this when I joined my current employer. My boss's emails were (are) at worst unintelligible and best hard to follow, weirdly formatted and generally hard to grok. Usually they are just blocks of text that are one big garden path sentance. But it all magically goes away in client communications Not sure why this is, but it never really bothered me. It took me a while to learn my boss's interpretation of the English language. I don't think its a case of being in a position where it doesn't matter, other department heads don't do this, I reckon its just down to necessity. You aren't trying to portray an image of yourself to your team, you don't need to come across as a poet laureate for internal discussions. If you are trying to craft an image of yourself to your team instead of doing your job well and letting your work build your image you are doing something wrong Spend your time wisely, put effort into your emails where it matters, format everything nicely, double/triple check your grammar, but among colleagues you don't need to pretend
daine 9mo ago
It is my feeling that some of the conspicuous behaviors of people in positions of influence and monetary wealth do, in fact, rob the practitioner of the small joys of life won through small sacrifice. I do not envy the man who gains hedonic leisure at the expense of the opportunity to elevate a mundane message into a medium for a modicum of joy, and potential human connection. I love tending my garden, and trimming the weeds in our sidewalk.
tempodox 9mo ago
The conspiracy theories about power signalling in the other comments are all well and good, but I have a simpler theory: U.S.-ians don’t know their own language, plain and simple. There’s a reason that American English is referred to as “English, Simplified”. The U.S. is a culture of barbarism, and language is one of the more conspicuous areas where it shows. I’d suggest that those who still know grammar and orthography are less victims of a power imbalance than just better educated. Or maybe their tastes aren’t as badly ruined yet.

337 points by surprisetalk 9mo ago

Never thought of it that way, very interesting insight. I always thought those "K circle back" emails were fake but nope looks like they're very real.

saghm 9mo ago

At one of my previous jobs some of my coworkers and I had an in-joke about how it was possible to tell which of the emails from the CEO were written directly by him or not based on whether it used the spelling "pls" for "please" because of how often he liked to use it. It hadn't occurred to me to view this phenomenon in the way that the article does, but at least in my experience it certainly seems to be accurate.

hnlmorg 9mo ago
A CEO saying “please”, regardless of how it’s spelt, is itself an anomaly ;)
- titanomachy 9mo ago
  He’s saying half the word, at least… pretty good for a CEO.
- PinkSheep 8mo ago
  I remember people complaining about how some can't write out a full "thanks" instead of "thx"

StevenWaterman 9mo ago

This is almost textbook countersignalling. The same as: - Signalling: I dress more formally than everyone else to make up for the fact I'm less professional in other ways - No signalling: I dress like everyone else because I am like everyone else - Countersignalling: I wear ratty old clothes with holes in them, and nobody will dare to question it because I'm the important one here

bonoboTP 9mo ago
On the positive side of this, research papers by competent people read very clearly with readable sentences, while those who are afraid that their content doesn't quite cut it, litter it with jargon, long complicated sentences, hoping that by making things hard, they will look smart. But to expand on the spelling topic, good spelling and grammar is now free with AI tools. It no longer signals being educated. Informal tone and mistakes actually signal that the message was written by a human and the imperfections increase my trust in the effort spent on the thing.
- crassus_ed 9mo ago
  >Informal tone and mistakes actually signal that the message was written by a human and the imperfections increase my trust in the effort spent on the thing. Isn’t this a bit short sighted? So if someone has a wide vocabulary and uses proper grammar, you mistrust them by default?
  - bonoboTP 9mo ago
    Not necessarily but it carries less weight than pre-LLMS. Obviously it's just a heuristic and not the whole story and telltale AI signs are not purely about good spelling and grammar. But I just appreciate some natural, human texture in my correspondence these days.
  - tryauuum 9mo ago
    a vocabulary of certain width raises a question "does this creature understand the words it is using?". So yeah I mistrust them more
  - coldtea 9mo ago
    >Isn’t this a bit short sighted? So if someone has a wide vocabulary and uses proper grammar, you mistrust them by default? Yes, people, in general, do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_gjWlW0kRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_gjWlW0kRs
    - 9mo ago

swe_dima 9mo ago

Definitely my experience as well. Another dimension to this is native vs 2nd language speakers. For those of us who had to learn English, we put a lot of effort into grammar, while native speakers whip out half-baked sentences without a second thought.

robmusial 9mo ago

> It's almost as if, once you get to a certain level of power, you no longer need to try. Correct. I think it's also a bit of a shibboleth now, like not wearing a suit. In former days the lower ranked employees wore jeans, t-shirts, hoodies, etc. and the bosses all wore suits and ties. Now it's the opposite at least in tech. If you see someone in "business" attire, you know they're middle management or sales and have no power, where if someone is in a tshirt and jeans they're probably a founder or executive. It's a flex to dress casual.

rsynnott 9mo ago
> Now it's the opposite at least in tech. If you see someone in "business" attire, you know they're middle management or sales and have no power, where if someone is in a tshirt and jeans they're probably a founder or executive. It's a flex to dress casual. Eh? I've been working in tech for over 20 years. For all of that time, most people wore casual clothes.

bananaflag 9mo ago

What is sad is that these people from the start think of good grammar as an effort to "look professional" (which they can then discard), and not as an effort to be clear, an effort which fits into the basic respect one gives other people.

undeveloper 9mo ago
who is "these people"
- bananaflag 9mo ago
  the ones writing those emails with bad grammar
  - Nevermark 9mo ago
    That was not clear to me either. But, given that clarification, I agree!
- rexpop 9mo ago
  The psychopaths who rise to the top of capitalism.[0][1] 0. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-science-behind-why-so-many-successful-millionaires-are-psychopaths-and-why-it-doesnt-have-to-be-a-bad-thing.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-science-behind-why-so-ma... 1. https://www.newsweek.com/ceo-dark-personality-success-machiavellian-psychology-2087839 https://www.newsweek.com/ceo-dark-personality-success-machia...
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
snikeris 9mo ago
This is a good point. Perhaps the poor attempt at grammar indicates a lack of empathy, which is a trait the Epstein-adjacent share.
Telemakhos 9mo ago
That's what's taught in a lot of linguistics and language classes now: rules of spelling and grammar are power games designed to perpetuate one culture while repressing others, rather than tools for clarifying thought. It's fallout from the postmodern search for power dynamics in all things. A friend recently brought up Orwell's essay on "Politics and the English Language" [0] and the Merriam Webster's Word Matters Podcast episode on it [1]. She had "read" without understanding the former and had listened with credulity to the latter. The podcast savages Orwell for not understanding "how language in general and English in particular actually works" and for his "absolutism" but especially for violating all of his precepts in his essay. Had either my friend or the podcasters bothered to read the essay carefully, they would have found that Orwell explains that he did so deliberately. When I asked my friend to summarize Orwell's essay and distill it to a single thesis, she replied that he was simply prescriptivist and wanted to tell people what to do. That's what the podcast got out of it too. For example, from the podcast: > A big part of the conversations that we've all had with members of the public or strangers, people who correspond with a dictionary in one way or another, is some kind of membership of a club. "You care about language in the way that I do." There is absolutely a huge moral component that is imposed upon that. We always are judging others by their use of language. We are always judged by our use of language, by the way we spell, by the way we pronounce words. That's just a simple human fact. It's easier for us as professionals to separate that from culture. The last sentence reminds me of a feedback loop: the "professionals" claim power based on the fact that they see the exercise of power in language rather than on how to use language for communicating clearly. This is how we get to a point where good grammar is a tool for "looking professional" rather than speaking and writing clearly. I walked my friend back through the actual essay and asked her what Orwell wanted from each point, and she realized that it was, in fact, clarity, not power. Orwell wanted to challenge his readers to think about what they wanted to say before saying it, so that they could say what they meant rather than repeating what they heard commonly said (a note could be made here about large language models and probability). [0] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-matters-podcast/episode-85-orwells-politics-and-the-english-language https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-matters-podcast/episode...

gleipnircode 9mo ago

That fits witj my experiences. And i want to add an otjer layer. In ai times its somtimes even nice to see some typos. You Casn be pretty sure it was not written by ai.

mikepurvis 9mo ago
"sent from my iphone"
- Spivak 9mo ago
  Positive (tryhard) signaling: having a well designed email footer with all your contact info Neutral signaling: no footer at all -1 signaling: sent from my iPhone -2 signaling: sent from my Samsung AI Family Hub 4-Door Flex Fridge
  - rationalist 9mo ago
    I think "Sent from my iPhone" is now less of a status symbol than it is an excuse for short replies / bad grammar.
    - Aloisius 9mo ago
      Status symbol? I just assumed that was from people who aren't technologically literate enough to remove the default signature. It never occurred to me it might be intentional.
- caminante 9mo ago
  *Please forgive any typos
- burntalmonds 9mo ago
  There needs to be a new sig like "Written by Claude" or something. I'd rather somebody just openly admits it.
  - 9mo ago

renewiltord 9mo ago

[flagged]

queenkjuul 9mo ago
Congratulations on learning a new word
- relaxing 9mo ago
  [dead]
  - renewiltord 9mo ago
    How sad I’m missing literacy privilege but fortunately looks like I’ve got downvote privilege so that will make up for it. Though, after thinking about it, I have illiteracy privilege so there’s that too.
glitchc 9mo ago
Loved your comment, made my day. Thanks!
- renewiltord 9mo ago
  Why, thank you. It was my pri—<User was banned for this comment>
thrance 9mo ago
What else should you call something that is only socially acceptable for a certain group of people to do? I understand word fatigue, but it feels very adequately used here.
- renewiltord 9mo ago
  [flagged]

queenkjuul 9mo ago

At first i was about to disagree, because i thought, "ah hell nah man I'm sending emojis and shit at work all day" and then i realized, i send emojis and shit to my peers all day (well, and to my dumbass boss who i don't respect). I think about the email i sent that was to be read by the CTO and i not only ensured it was totally correct, i asked a colleague to proofread it.

4rtem 9mo ago

This is why I like to have business with Germans and Japanese, their emails are the best.

bluedino 9mo ago

I had a boss once who had "this is sent from my phone, please excuse any spelling or grammar" as his email signature

rationalist 9mo ago
… 'as his Desktop Outlook signature' (Although he could at least use proper grammar in the automated signature line...)
athenot 9mo ago
A more appropriate signature would be "Please excuse any auto-correct errors that my ducking phone might have added."

graypegg 9mo ago

Using language "correctly" is one of humanity's oldest class dividers. [citation needed, source: me speculating] If you personally benefit from dividing people into in- and out-groups (most of the time you do), saying you must speak a certain way is a great way to get people to self-identify on one side of that line. (Excluding cases where grammar helps with communication, that's "I don't understand you" versus "you sound poor".) You make it hard enough that someone needs years of expensive education or has to be born in the right family that speaks the right way, and now all we can do it try to meet that arbitrary standard. Everyone will struggle, so the act of calling it out is a choice, rather than a fact. If someone lets that mask slip, IMO it's because they're not worried about being accused of occupying the wrong side of the line, rather than any lack of "trying". Trying sort of implies there is a goal to hit.

zamadatix 9mo ago

Grammar privilege feels 90% understanding the audience and timing vs something like 10% power dynamics. As with most things where there can be a power imbalance, that does not mean those with power (e.g. managers) should not help set expectations on an even field with each of their employees anyways. Nor does it mean the other 10% of cases don't exist, just "don't ignore that 90% of this is probably one being too worried about sounding professional in every possible scenario". Before going into the workforce, we're usually taught professionals are expected to communicate like professionals 100% of the time. It's just the safer bet to make as it's simply a lot harder (though certainly not impossible) to foul things up in a professional situation by having good grammar and well written emails than vice versa. That said, it seems like most people I've ever actually worked with (on any level) do not like communicating 100% professionally the majority of the time (especially in small groups/directly) and may actually consider THAT disrespectful. Some from practicality ("don't waste so much time on an email we could have talked through casually in a minute" etc), some for just having different social expectations ("We've worked together for 3 years, why are you sounding like a door-to-door salesman about to make a pitch to me instead of just saying you had a thought" etc), or a laundry list of other reasons. Telling when and how much professionalism is expected is just something you have to learn to read the individual/crowd for, but it's probably a positive signal a lot less often than the author assumes it usually is.

vonnik 9mo ago

This is so yawn. Do young professionals starting out have to impress their bosses? Yes. Do bosses have to impress them? Usually not. Who cares? Power dynamics exist, it’s easy to play the grammar game, so just do it and stop pretending it’s some form of oppression.

twoodfin 9mo ago
TBH, a junior dev pointed at an urgent issue who replies simply, “on it” vs. one who takes the time to write a short book report on their initial analysis and plans is—all else being equal—not a close call when it comes to promotion time. I don’t want to be impressed, I want problems to be solved.

otterley 9mo ago

What I've seen is that leaders often communicate brusquely downward, but formally upward - and the higher the rank, the greater the magnitude (in each direction). I think it's a consequence of having more and more people asking you things (on the downward side), while being responsible for decisions of more critical importance (on the upward side) as you go further up the chain of command.

AbstractH24 9mo ago
What makes you think its just "leaders"?
- otterley 9mo ago
  This response isn’t very helpful. Can you elaborate with your own experience?

parpfish 9mo ago

if i sent an email to my ceo and they replied with typos and bad grammar, i wouldn't think "wow, they are flexing their privilege to be able to do that". i would be excited that i'm being treated as a member of the inner circle and they can speak freely and casually with me.

zephen 9mo ago
Some people think texts are for quick one-off messages and emails are for longer more thoughtful missives. But (a) most corporate communication isn't by text, and (b) the CEO is probably from a time when there weren't any texts, so emails themselves were often used casually, in lieu of sticky notes. In any case, I'm with you. The trope of microaggressions is way overused, and applying it to someone who is usefully communicating with you is rubbish.
jscd 9mo ago
I can kinda see your point, especially if the meaning is still obvious and the tone is inviting you to participate, but I think you're misunderstanding what "privilege" means here. It isn't a superior "flexing their privilege" over their subordinates. The superior doesn't care. They don't even think about it. Because they have power over you, they can just speak gibberish and you have to figure it out. In my opinion, a good boss should have enough respect for me to not waste my time by forcing me to decipher a thought they didn't even read before sending.

engineer_22 9mo ago

In the United states, at least in my business, we prize congeniality and sincerity. I think part of the trend the author discovered might be that experienced professionals unconsciously use informal language structures to avoid seeming pretentious.

foxwell_1959 9mo ago

Isn’t this more about the specific generation these people represent instead of their privilege?

wolframhempel 9mo ago

I'd put it the other way around: Bad Grammar is a courtesy. I run a startup that's small, but busy. I get a high frequency stream of inbound questions, notifications and asks to make decisions by my team and customers. If I don't respond or decide quickly I become a bottleneck. Likewise, if I wait, things pile up. So, rather than keep everyone waiting for me, I make a point of pulling my phone out as soon as I get a message and provide an answer straight away as much as possible. These answers are brief and to the point. And they are laden with shitty grammar. But they are almost instant and that feels better than a well formulated essay two hours later. Having said that, I started using Gmail's "polish" feature to turn "yes" into "That sounds great, let's go ahead with it" or some such corporatism. Not sure if that's much better...

bobbiechen 9mo ago
Speed is a courtesy, sure. I think polish for the sake of polish is bad, and the AI powered polishing is worse. See also: https://x.com/ClickHole/status/2020915972979425699 https://x.com/ClickHole/status/2020915972979425699
zephen 9mo ago
> Bad Grammar is a courtesy. I agree. Or at least to the extent that the complaint is that bad grammar signifies dispensing with formality, dispensing with formality is often a courtesy. Too many people have it drilled into them that "If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well" when in reality if a job is worth doing, it is often worth doing very badly indeed, because it really, really just needs to be done. It takes a large amount of very unproductive navel-gazing to assume that a message that unequivocally gives you the information you need, yet that doesn't measure up to your own perceptions of how much effort should have gone into the crafting of the email, is an insult directed at you, rather than a focus on the message rather than the medium. Even if Marshall McLuhan's dictum is correctly applied to this scenario, the message conveyed by the medium could well be "Stop wasting so much time agonizing over phrasing! Just spit it out!" rather than "I'm better than you so I can get away with sloppy shit that I would excoriate you for."

colpabar 9mo ago

It's funny she mentions the horrible grammar in the leaked sony emails because that's what I remember most from it too. This one always gets a laugh from me. https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/33tkv6/actual_leaked_sony_email_about_the_amazing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/33tkv6/actua...

leflambeur 9mo ago

In the country where I grew up, physicians have immense clout and are notorious for writing unintelligibly. I once pointed this out as a kid and was told by the secretary something like: the doctor is too busy to write legible prescriptions.

apparent 9mo ago

I think this isn't quite what "privilege" means, at least these days. People talk about "white privilege" for example, meaning that people who are white can do XYZ or avoid ABC, unlike other people. In the example the author writes about, the privilege is not "being a bag grammar person", it's being a high-ranking person. The bad grammar is the thing that those people are able to get away with. IMO, he's confusing the disease with the symptom, so to speak. Separately, I would say that high-ranking people can definitely get away with short emails, and to some extent brusque emails. Bad grammar is perhaps just the next domino to topple.

AbstractH24 9mo ago
Yeah, if they are using the term "privilege" in the way that its used in pop-culture this post lost me.

wilg 9mo ago

I think its probably just having to respond to lots of messages from your phone in the middle of meetings is the job, and you'll quickly decide that getting the point across is the most important thing.

BryanA 9mo ago

I had a boss who would respond with: "NO" or "OK"

blipvert 9mo ago
Reminds me of the apocryphal story of Victor Hugo asking his publisher how his new novel was doing with a single “?”. The publisher replied “!”. Do your boss could still save themselves 50% of the work.
stronglikedan 9mo ago
I like to ask people what I did to make them yell at me when I get a message with all caps. It usually stops.

PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago

Hobbes says that talking to someone with courtesy is honor(giving them relative power), and talking trashy is dishonor(reducing their relative power). Its not very long, but I use this in my daily life: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3207/pg3207-images.html#link2H_4_0071 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3207/pg3207-images.html... I also use the 12 bullet points before that on Power.

kashnote 9mo ago

Maybe someone can clarify this but I was also pretty appalled by the grammar in the Epstein emails until someone pointed out it could be an artifact of OCR or decoding issues. Not sure why they would have to do OCR on emails. Were they printed out? On PDF for some reason? The decoding thing I kinda get but that you can easily point out because of all the equal signs.

mattbee 9mo ago

blipvert 9mo ago
!

kayo_20211030 9mo ago

I point you to Nancy Mitford's piece (and others) on U vs non-U. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English This was a, tongue in cheek, distinction between the language used by the posh and by the aspiring-posh. It's seems analogous to the OP's sense of boss vs non-boss language and diction, which I believe exists.

vunderba 9mo ago

From the article: > It's almost as if, once you get to a certain level of power, you no longer need to try. It’s relative to the power level difference between the two parties. We’re talking about someone (your boss) who doesn’t really need to present an appearance of professionalism to their proverbial lowly underlings. As slapdash as their response to you might appear - if you were to observe that same person composing a reply to the CEO, I'd wager that all the hallmarks of grammatical precision and professionalism would be back in spades.

dostick 9mo ago

I am more appalled that all those emails have that footer that says - if you’re not intended recipient you should delete immediately. Yet people see it and just copy those emails. No respect for the legal disclaimer. Now they can all be sued for ignoring that legal disclaimer, I suppose they will face justice sooner than all those people in emails.

zephen 9mo ago
That footer is legally meaningless. And the companies adding the footer? Their attack lawyers are assholes trying to scare everybody. Fuck them.

chatmasta 9mo ago

> If I had sent out an email with even a quarter of the typos they had, I probably would've lost my job. This probably isn’t true, though. But you didn’t want to test your luck, so you took the safe route of carefully crafting your emails. The privilege is not worrying about being fired over trivial reasons.

illusive4080 9mo ago

It’s because the higher you are in the chain of corporate command, the less time you have to dedicate to each task. You end up with shorter answers to every note because you wouldn’t have time to reply to all notes and do the strategic things you need to do, otherwise. As an individual contributor on a team, you may have to interface at most with 30 people on a weekly basis. As a second line leader you may have 150 people under your purview, and another 50 outsiders you have to talk to. You can’t scale the amount of time you have, so you scale the amount of time you spend on replies.

_whiteCaps_ 9mo ago
Shorter answers don't necessitate terrible grammar. Maybe it's because my mom was a teacher and I had good grammar drilled into me, but I feel like it shows respect for the people you're communicating with.
- makeset 9mo ago
  > respect for the people you're communicating with That is exactly why executive grammar is so bad.
rbonvall 9mo ago
That doesn't explain the "punctuating with multiple cryface emojis".
LambdaComplex 9mo ago
Using the example from the article: "K let circle back nxt week bout it . thnks" I'm not buying your argument. The amount of additional time that it would have taken to write that same message with proper grammar and spelling is minuscule.
- arduanika 9mo ago
  The boss was following Strunk & White's advice to omit needless letters.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

daralthus 9mo ago

ppl are so sensitive. it's not impolite to be direct. why would you be wasting each other's time by "dear, sincerely etc" every single time.

lkey 9mo ago
y ask q u dunno answer 2?
- zephen 9mo ago
  To be fair, most questions are asked because the querent does not know the answer. But [that's not what happened here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question)

snickerer 9mo ago

Bad grammar is disrespect. Underlings have to swallow that disrespect. It is just a power game. The next level is simply to insult everyone, and everyone will still remain submissive.

gzread 9mo ago
[dead]
shermantanktop 9mo ago
And if you insult people, and get rewarded by submission, one reaction is to amp up the insults. After all, you don't know the limits of your power until someone quits. So abuse people, exhibit outlandish public behavior, say racist or otherwise objectionable things...every person who remains on your payroll is a sign of how powerful you are. This is not a common tactic, but it's a highly visible tactic, and it's not hard to find some notable examples out there right now.
H8crilA 9mo ago
[flagged]
mempko 9mo ago
Except they don't just talk this way with underlings but everyone including their peers.
- blahaj 9mo ago
  I think the key is whether they expect their underlings to be more formal or if it actually goes both ways.

themafia 9mo ago

> If I had sent out an email with even a quarter of the typos they had, I probably would've lost my job. Who told you that? Or maybe... what state do you work in? I cannot even imagine starting the HR process to fire someone because of bad emails.

cracki 9mo ago
HR has a huge bag of tricks. They can fire anyone for anything and nothing.
- themafia 9mo ago
  > HR has a huge bag of tricks. Yea, one of them is called "actually doing their jobs." In my company they spend far more time mediating problems than they do thinking up clever ways to fire someone without just cause.

tamimio 9mo ago

I used to be super keen about grammar and typos in texts as well, recently, I have been intentionally keeping some mistakes to prove that a human actually wrote that text and wasn’t AI generated, from my personal observation, I found that people now assume any perfectly written text is an AI generated and ended up not reading it all.

calmbonsai 9mo ago

I don't think the author realizes the time*attention triage that happens when your sole corporate responsibility is to manage others. I've noticed a distinct personal trend in "email succinctness" the more people I need to manage. That said, using good grammar is never a bad thing and depending on the subject matter and relationships between the respective communicators, short-hand can be both a deliberate obfuscation practice and social coding of the intimacy of the respective relationships.

azangru 9mo ago

> but grammar privilege? That's certainly a first. Here is what I don't understand, and what is not addressed in the post. After you get a response from your boss that reads, "K let circle back nxt week bout it . thnks", doesn't this free you up to relax your style to your comfort level? If you see that your addressee doesn't seem to care for meticulous style, is there much point in stressing over it (and thus, in continuing with the privilege narrative)?

freetime2 9mo ago
Unfortunately there is a double standard at play. When people see a sloppy email from a powerful person, they think “they must be so busy that they don’t have time to check grammar”. But when it comes from a low-level employee they think “oh they must be careless or uneducated”.
- maxverse 9mo ago
  100%. "Needs more attention to detail."
- pickleRick243 9mo ago
  except it's sort of true and a reasonable assumption to make? Just as when a master painter makes something that looks "sloppy" to the layman, one immediately assumes there is some deep artistry behind it as opposed to poor technique, whereas when a child does it, one does not extend the same charitable attitude.
  - freetime2 9mo ago
    Sure I think there's some truth the that. You've gotta learn the rules first to know when it's ok break the rules. Somebody with a lot of experience should be able to judge how their message will be received, and what amount of effort is "good enough". Whereas someone with less workspace experience may lack such judgement, and is probably better off erring on the side of "too good" rather than "not good enough". But it's definitely also very much tied to status, power, and privilege. The same people who have no qualms about firing off a sloppy email to their subordinates often spend a lot more effort on emails to their bosses. But even this discrepancy is justified, I think, given that a manager represents their subordinates to the higher ups. And the potential consequences of a bad impression or misunderstanding are more severe when communicating up the chain of command.

ivraatiems 9mo ago

Informality and bad grammar but otherwise sound decision making is fine, I think everyone's arguments for it here make sense. But let's not pretend that, at least in the US, that's what it's limited to. Our current and immediate past president are both elderly men with potentially compromised mental states who regularly say crazy nonsense stuff. Try watching this (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=455169079910588 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=455169079910588) or this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZsdlULgqvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZsdlULgqvA) and then watch the literal crowds of people who are saying "you just don't understand! You're not parsing it right! You're not paying enough attention to their genius!" It's wild that we make excuses like this for people. One has to ask where the line is. This almost certainly happens in business, too - it's just not as obvious because those folks don't have to constantly do it in public.

SLWW 9mo ago

K much to thin bout . thnks Sent from my iPhone

LAC-Tech 9mo ago

There's no high culture anymore. Rich people don't go to operas or read poetry or literature. They drink too much and they can't spell. They're just plebs with money.

VerifiedReports 9mo ago

I don't know where this guy has worked, but I've never worked for anyone who communicates like an ignorant, lazy ass. Also, while I find his criticism valid for having had indeed seen it, this is ironic: "how sloppy and unprofessional emails from executives looked like."

rbanffy 9mo ago

This is a bit in the same direction as Epstein’s horrible tech higiene- using computers with outdated software, little or no cryptography, and so on. Another person summarised it quite well: “too rich to care”.

asveikau 9mo ago
Maybe he considered himself beyond prosecution. So he didn't care that he arranged trafficking on Gmail under his real name. Additionally, if Gmail is a problem, Sergey Brin went to his events. In one document drop Joi Ito is asking him about security hygiene and saying he is "worried about his emails".

asveikau 9mo ago

Many people point to the bad spelling and grammar of these powerful, abusive people and they say wow, that's a flex. My own reaction is more like these people are stupid. It's not power that makes them write poorly. They're not capable of getting it right. Look at what Noam Chomsky wrote to Epstein as a contrast. Multiple paragraphs and usually coherent. He makes Epstein look dumb. (Which he was.) I don't support what and to whom Chomsky was writing, but he is better at writing.

teshigahara 9mo ago
Exactly. Remember this is a guy who was "best friends" with Donald Trump. It's just a group of idiots who became rich and powerful through a combination of luck and criminality.
NoGravitas 9mo ago
The thing is that "being an idiot" would have consequences for you; it doesn't have consequences for them.
- asveikau 9mo ago
  This isn't black and white. Tons of people face little or no consequences for being idiots, but don't achieve the levels that Epstein did.

paulnpace 9mo ago

*poor

yieldcrv 9mo ago

I latch on to some of these trends by lowercasing everything, in this case I mostly just don’t correct it if I missed a case its more like insulation, the people that criticize it seem less connected and less compensated than me while understanding exactly what was conveyed, and the people like me are the same like “look at this try hard middle manager that doesn’t focus on anything relevant” one thing I do consciously correct is punctuation, I remove periods after consciously typing them, since an entire generation of people considers it a harsh statement, while the lack of period doesn’t confuse anyone else language exists to convey a shared concept

cracki 9mo ago
people are scared of periods? ... lmao!
- mythrwy 9mo ago
  They have replaced them with exclamation marks! Every sentence must end with an exclamation mark, or you aren't excited and positive enough!
- shmeeed 9mo ago
  Mostly men.
  - yieldcrv 9mo ago
    ba dum tiss

patpatpat 9mo ago

As a poor kid I was deeply insecure about my falling apart shoes, however the wealthier kids would relish taping up their talking shoes like it was a running joke.

w10-1 9mo ago

It's not intelligence, respect, signaling or status. It's saving time, the thing we can't bank or stretch or keep. Doing that reflects value priorities that are likely to lead to success and happiness. We would all be this brief if we weren't constrained otherwise. People who care deeply about their time are this brief even if they shouldn't be. You can even say nothing in ways that influence others in the ways you want (from spiritual teachers and parents to politicians and mafia dons). (Wealth and power trashing is all too easy these days. Pick a hard target?)

MichaelDickens 9mo ago
It's both. Saving time is a form of status signaling. Professionalism usually entails spending longer on something than is optimal for effective communication, which is a way of signaling "my time is less valuable than yours". Writing short messages with grammatical errors is a way of signaling "my time is more valuable than your comprehension".

youknownothing 9mo ago

there is also the matter that, at one point, people stop differentiating between communication media, the boundaries between email and texting disappear.

npilk 9mo ago

I wonder if this has implications for AI alignment? Maybe prompting with poor spelling and grammar will make the AI eager to please the privileged, high-power user. (/s)

mempko 9mo ago

I've noticed this too when dealing with people with power. If you want to be seen as a peer, you have to stop caring. It's weird but it's definitely in the culture. As someone who learned English as a second language, it's especially weird since I worked hard to speak and write good English.

skeptrune 9mo ago

Privilege is working at a startup

kingofmen 9mo ago

This is not my experience at all. I have never received an informal email like this from a manager; even chat threads at my job are generally correctly spelled, grammatical, and fully professional. Maybe I'm not talking to sufficiently exalted leadership?

mikkupikku 9mo ago

People who try to flex by using shitty grammar are just exposing themselves as base philistines who can't do it using obscure words and erudite references.

wakawaka28 9mo ago

My eyes are bleeding from trying to read this blog. Please pick less obnoxious colors.

tayo42 9mo ago

The emoji use is general is weird. It's like the flair thing from office space, like everyone tries hard to be quirky or something idk.

throwyawayyyy 9mo ago

Just a random comment but: what a delightful blog. Even though I disagree on the virtues of cats (they really aren't all monsters. Ours is only occasionally evil).

getnormality 9mo ago

What does it have to do with privilege? This person's need for grammar seems to be self-imposed. I don't see where anyone judged him for bad grammar while a privileged person was given a get-out-of-jail-free card for the grammar police.

didntcheck 9mo ago
Yep > If I had sent out an email with even a quarter of the typos they had, I probably would've lost my job. I don't know their life, and they may be right, but I think they may well just be imagining it. I also went from excessive formality to short conversational tone as I became more experienced. But it wasn't due to any promotions, but because I realized nobody had ever cared I mean this is a standard cliché even in fictional works: the young new worker who keeps falling over themselves to perform what they think is necessary formality, only to be shown that they can just chill out and act like a human

userbinator 9mo ago

I've seen messages like that from junior employees up to CEOs. I think it's mainly because most people simply can't type and think quickly enough (150-200wpm) that their thoughts naturally become words with next to no effort.

kevinpet 9mo ago

The title of the article cites bad grammar, but the example doesn't have any grammatical problems. It has clear typos and questionable abbreviations but it doesn't have any of the bad grammar signs that grate on me, like comprise vs. compose or over utilization of "utilize" where "use" would do just fine. You might say that "let's circle back" is annoying business jargon, but it is a very common phrase and aside from the typos correctly applied in this example.

wcfrobert 9mo ago

It just occurred to me that I chat with LLMs like I'm a CEO.

tqi 9mo ago

Jesus no wonder 10% of Americans are on SSRIs, if this is the kind of petty stuff people are ruminating on...

daft_pink 9mo ago

I think this is just more how the real world varies from academia. In the working world, few people really care about grammar, but we spend out life growing up in classrooms where teachers critique and be rate us on our grammar.

wind_rider 9mo ago

[dead]

erelong 9mo ago

I think it's just that grammar is independent of getting results; so bosses who might get results might also have bad grammar. Having good grammar doesn't make you any more able to get things done - in other words, someone with bad grammar might be more able to get things fone than someone with good grammar

AbstractH24 9mo ago

Privilege or confidence? The different relationships between those two things is something I never considered until this post.

benzible 9mo ago

Great, detailed explanation of the "weird formatting": https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2026/02/02/whats-up-with-all-those-equals-signs-anyway/ https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2026/02/02/whats-up-with-all-th... (I knew it was "quoted printable" as soon as I saw it but there's a lot more to it).

weirdmantis69 9mo ago

One anecdote about Bill Gates is he was in the Bahamas perhaps to purchase some real estate and he was dressed very down to the point where he looked like a bum. He went into a local real estate office where the lady was dressed in a suit and to the 9's despite it being 40 degrees outside. And she went and told him that real estate was expensive in the Bahamas and he needed a lot of money to buy to which he replied "I might be able to work something out you never know". So ya the super rich don't need to sound good or look good they simply have money.

gsck 9mo ago

I kinda went through this when I joined my current employer. My boss's emails were (are) at worst unintelligible and best hard to follow, weirdly formatted and generally hard to grok. Usually they are just blocks of text that are one big garden path sentance. But it all magically goes away in client communications Not sure why this is, but it never really bothered me. It took me a while to learn my boss's interpretation of the English language. I don't think its a case of being in a position where it doesn't matter, other department heads don't do this, I reckon its just down to necessity. You aren't trying to portray an image of yourself to your team, you don't need to come across as a poet laureate for internal discussions. If you are trying to craft an image of yourself to your team instead of doing your job well and letting your work build your image you are doing something wrong Spend your time wisely, put effort into your emails where it matters, format everything nicely, double/triple check your grammar, but among colleagues you don't need to pretend

daine 9mo ago

It is my feeling that some of the conspicuous behaviors of people in positions of influence and monetary wealth do, in fact, rob the practitioner of the small joys of life won through small sacrifice. I do not envy the man who gains hedonic leisure at the expense of the opportunity to elevate a mundane message into a medium for a modicum of joy, and potential human connection. I love tending my garden, and trimming the weeds in our sidewalk.

tempodox 9mo ago

The conspiracy theories about power signalling in the other comments are all well and good, but I have a simpler theory: U.S.-ians don’t know their own language, plain and simple. There’s a reason that American English is referred to as “English, Simplified”. The U.S. is a culture of barbarism, and language is one of the more conspicuous areas where it shows. I’d suggest that those who still know grammar and orthography are less victims of a power imbalance than just better educated. Or maybe their tastes aren’t as badly ruined yet.