I have this with grammar. When I read modern websites, articles, papers, emails from HR, etc. with their sloppy English and comma-splices everywhere, it annoys me way too much and it's a real challenge to push on through and keep reading.
It feels like walking through a maze, with an uneven floor and bad lighting, full of dead-ends, compared to walking down a pleasant, well-lit corridor.
I used to write some of the worst English out there. Then I became part in a streamers community, where proper English grammar was encouraged/enforced. (Well, more like having to at least try to write proper English, there was quite a bit of leeway) Ever since then, I get incredibly annoyed at people just writing "liek this and not giving an crap about proper grammar or punctuation this makes text harder to read then necessary"
Same. Also I get annoyed when pointing out (in good manner) misspellings, bad grammar, or technical inaccuracies gets called out as pedantry or policing, especially here on HN. Sure, it's not the end of the world - but the reason we have a nice place here is, in big part, because enough people care to set certain quality expectations. When that erodes, so do nice things.
This is spot-on. HR is bad, but at least writing is not their main job, so I'm willing to cut them some slack.
My main concern is the writing I see coming out of the Public Relations and Communications departments. Writing is not exactly tangential to those fields.
Maybe it’s related to how we (government, industry) used to routinely make great instructional videos and other learning materials, but are now largely terrible at it.
I suspect it’s all connected to the rise of a professional management class, rather than promotion through the ranks, and management by people who’ve done the work. Nobody who’s in a position to demand better or to make sure the right people are in the right roles, actually knows WTF they’re doing outside of a spreadsheet and PowerPoint.
It feels like there is a whole lot more cronyism and nepotism than I remember 20 years ago.
I am observing a lot of people in high paying jobs who don't have a clue how to do even the basics of their job (like being able to type proficiently in a job that requires written documentation).
This one is a bit more reasonable (to me at least). It seems to be an internet/texting convention that messages ending with a period are more formal/serious or potentially angry/irritated, whereas messages without a period are lighter/more fun. As an example:
“Have you taken the dog out?”
“Yes”
Vs
“Have you taken the dog out?”
“Yes.”
The second comes across as the responder being potentially irritated at the asker. I believe that this comes down to the amount of effort required to type the reply; adding a period is making the explicit choice to do so, whereas not doing so is the default. This isn’t the case for sentences in the middle of a multi-sentence answer, since a separator is needed anyways. But I find myself not adding a period even at the end of multi-sentence messages, and I automatically read any message ending with a period with a different tone than one which does not.
Maybe I’m just nuts though, that’s always an option. But with text being such a relatively limited medium for conveying emotion in short messages, I think this is a reasonable solution.
It feels like walking through a maze, with an uneven floor and bad lighting, full of dead-ends, compared to walking down a pleasant, well-lit corridor.