On 03/30/2010 10:47 PM, Don Kelly wrote: > I agree with much of what you say regarding judging the quality of a > potential vendor by how carefully they express themselves, but I don't think > it's appropriate for anyone to adopt the role of critic unless the person > being critiqued has requested that service.
That goes back to my first argument, the gist of which is basically that someone has to do it. > Setting oneself up as an arbiter of linguistic perfection ...with the caveat that I made no such claim or expressed this aspiration. That would be really rich, if for no other reason than that English isn't my first language, either. I still think it's reasonable for me to argue that there is a discernable difference between well-written - if imperfect - English and indolent drivel. Your nitpicking of my own grammatical anomalies and punctuation may be an attempt to obscure that argument, but it does not undermine it. > invites others to question why you use two spaces after a semicolon, It goes with the frequently encountered convention of double space separation in e-mail so that sentences are easier to visually separate. > use hyphens instead of dashes Bad habit, because they're so frequently used interchangeably in monospace font absent the clarity conferred by proper typesetting. > and use a structure like "are both (1) necessary and (2) don't set > themselves." Conventions of this nature are present in nearly everyone's casual writing. They are not grammatically sanctioned. > What does "as regards" mean? It must be a colloquialism in your area. It is an idiom, but I have trouble envisioning it a colloquialism in the American southeast. See entry 27 here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/as I don't know its origin. > If you think proofreading by a native speaker is a good idea, why the > English-English spelling of "demeanour," "actualise" and "anatomising"? I learned English orthography mostly from British literature, and some of that still remains. In a word, your critique is keen, but the larger argument encapsulating it seems to stem from the mistaken premise that I have deemed myself either an arbiter or a shining example of anything. That really does my argument a disservice by hyperbolising it. -- Alex Balashov - Principal Evariste Systems LLC Tel : +1 678-954-0670 Direct : +1 678-954-0671 Web : http://www.evaristesys.com/ -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
