Have spent much of today poring over a cover letter for a job application. My weekends are so the fun! Given that they wanted certain criteria addressed in the cover letter this took some time, and yes my usual verbosity played some part in what became a lengthy editing procedure. Suffice it to say that this cover letter has been looked at and critiqued by an international expert and a partner in a law firm. So maybe... maybe, I have it right now. All this effort for a job outside my realms of experience. But what the fuck? God's on my side so why not just apply, yes?
I was complimented on my ability to string a a grammatically accurate sentence together and upon my spelling during this process. I guess I'm so used to dealing with ESL students that I forget that most native speakers actually have English skills which are only marginally above those of the average high level ESL student. As I looked over several blogs tonight, some of which are written by "teachers" of English, I was shocked and dismayed to see just how povvo the level of English currently going around actually is. My favourite defence is "It's the Intaweb, I don't need to spell correctly or be grammatically accurate". I'm sorry, but the only excuse for breaking spelling and grammar rules on a regular basis is if you are so proficient in the language that you can experiment, or because you made a rare error - even I get picked up on these from time to time. Rare errors I can accept; consistent abuse of a language you are supposed to be teaching? Sorry fucktards, there's no excuse.
Even though the tonal variations of Mandarin are an utter pain in the arse, I think English is the most ruthless language to learn. Sure there are rules, but the number of exceptions makes learning the rules an even more odious task. I have the utmost respect for anyone that can master the English language from a non-native background. It's really damn hard people! Wish the hicks in country Australia (whose command of the language is questionable at best) could bear that in mind when they request language tests for migrants in this country.
You know what's better than sex? Falling in love with a girl five and half years after she fell in love with you and still getting a chance at being together.
Butterflies...
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4 comments:
CHRIS I hope that means what I think it means. You fucktard.
It means what you think it means
I am guilty of spelling and grammatical errors in my blog and as an editor I have no excuse. But when you do it for a living (and at times transforming the manuscript where you can't see the black for the red) - bugger the grammatically and spelling error free blog.
Look I do agree that things definitely slip through. My blog has them as well. We're all human after all. But I don't tend to notice too many on yours and it certainly doesn't result in a wholesale butchering of the language.
So my annoyance came at other people's blogs where the errors are so lazy and so common that at times it borders on barely comprehensible.
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