4 ms·
Teaching ourselves to communicate.
- lutusp 14y agoThis is unfortunately easier said than done. It's clear that written communication skills are in rapid decline, and it's easy to place a value on their presence, but stating the problem is much easier than solving it. Modern young technologists mostly hear words spoken and only rarely read more than a few hundred words at a sitting, so they regularly choose one word that sounds like three others and use that word in all cases -- I call this "homophonitis" and it's deadly. I can't count the number of comments about my Website I've received that proclaimed, "I like your sight" or "I like your cite". Adding to the difficulty is the sentiment that correcting a person's grammar or spelling is bad behavior, even though correcting a person's computer code is encouraged. High-quality prose and code are both important to any useful outcome, but even mentioning one of them is disparaged. Solutions are obvious: (a) much more time spent practicing high-quality, bidirectional written communications, (b) much less time spent listening to words spoken. And (c) abandonment of the unspoken rule that we can't correct terrible grammar and spelling. But I don't think this will happen.