Monday, March 17, 2008
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a weblog where the students of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville contemplate all things "Lord of the Rings," both modern and medieval
Blog Archive
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2008
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March
(23)
- Pippin's Commitment
- Milton's influence in The Lord of the Rings
- Gollum's Shelob Trickery
- Would knowledge of Shelob have stoped them?
- Five Towers and Zero Alliteration
- Last Act
- Why cant it be this simple?
- God-like presence in Middle Earth?
- good and evil
- Destiny and Choice
- Army from Cirith Ungol
- Help needed
- Frodo's development
- Sam and Frodo
- Dwarves
- I was excited about BEOWULF...
- Is Sauron God?
- Boromirs purpose!!!!!
- Three Persons, One Functional Unit: The Trinity in...
- Gandalf the Late
- Beowolf: the new movie...
- On Good Writing and Failing Memory
- Courage - Blawk Hawk Down
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March
(23)
Most Recent Comments
5 comments:
Yes, I don't know why people sit there and proof read other people's writings. They must have a lot of spare time on their hands!!
How about we ALL grow up and act like adults?
Hahaha!
I can't pull myself away from this blog until I post my thoughts on the matter of grammar, spelling, and complete thoughts. First off, I would like to make something clear. I consider myself intellectually superior to my nephew. One of the reasons I feel this way is because, with the exception of the occasional typo or misunderstanding, I put my thoughts into grammatically correct and comprehensible complete thoughts. My nephew does not understand grammar rules, and so he babbles about things in vague semi-sentences and writes things that vaguely resemble Nina Miller's post titled "Boromirs purpose!!!!!" (view here ) from Wednesday, March 5. On the other hand, I consider myself intellectually inferior to E. E. Cummings, who manipulated spelling and grammar intentionally and with great success. You see, E. E. Cummings understood the rules of grammar and knew how to spell, so when I read his poetry, I understand that when he misspelled something or disobeyed a rule of grammar, he was doing it for a reason. Whenever he did that, there was a meaning and a purpose behind it; there was a piece of information or a statement to be relayed to the understanding reader. When my nephew misspells something or makes a grammar mistake, it's because he's ignorant, and being ignorant is no merit. Because of this, I'm much more likely to listen to something E. E. Cummings has to say and much more likely to disregard something my nephew has to say.
Interestingly enough, Ms. Miller's intentions can be understood from a post so absent of grammar and riddled with misspellings. Even such a mysterious word as "ministereth" can be understood to mean "Minas Tirith" by a person who understands the subject. So, yes, as Anonymous wishes to illustrate by referring to Mike Pilato as "Mr. Palito," (view here) one's meaning can still be read even if the medium used to express the meaning is used incorrectly according to the rules that define that medium. To provide a simple example, this image can still be recognized as a cat, even though it's very heavily pixelated. I don't think anyone disagrees, however, that it would be a much better picture if it was of a higher-resolution. This is because the lines would flow together more smoothly, the image would be more readily apparent, and there would be less possibility for misinterpretation. In the same way, it is much better for one's thoughts to be represented by sentences that flow together smoothly, have readily apparent meanings, and avoid ambiguity.
As much as I would like to think that most of the people who write things online (whether they're posting comments on YouTube, writing an email, or contributing to a blog about a scholarly topic) know the difference between "no," "know," and "now" or "there," "their," and "they're," I realize that many people have no idea when to use these words and when not to use them. To jasontrout's credit, one can establish a significant separation between accidentally misspelling someone's name and simply not knowing (or not caring) how to spell everyday words. Ignoring the spelling rules is like intentionally leaving out citations in an essay because you have better things to be doing, whereas accidentally misspelling something because you're excited is like having inadvertent plagiarism in your dissertation because you had to hurry up and finish. That's completely acceptable, even by university standards.
There are certainly no rules on blogger.com stating that only complete sentences with proper grammar and correct spellings will be accepted. In fact, you're more than welcome to post complete gibberish if you so desire. If you want to be taken seriously, however, I suggest you take your form of expression seriously. If you don't put any thought into your writing, you can't expect anyone to thoughtfully read what you write. As a reminder, E. E. Cummings and my nephew may have produced similar-looking works, but no one cares about my nephew.
On a final note, I would like to point out that I am by no means perfect. Before someone points out a typo or mistake in my post and claims that I can't be taken seriously, let it be known that I at least proofread this, corrected all the mistakes I spotted, put effort into making it as clear and as poignant as possible, and I know the difference between "know" and "no."
First of all, the word BEOWULF is something you should be quite familiar with by this time. Secondly, to post yet another comment in bad faith just makes your comments shine even more so on yourself. To the notion of someone having time to spare on their hands....... That description seems to fit you quite well. Lastly, you spelled BEOWULF correctly, so the constructive criticism of your classmate must have worked.
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