Improving the quality of posts.

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mathepac

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Some posts in AAM are appalling if measured against any grammar, clarity, spelling, or readability standards - anyone's standard except the poster's. Some are appalling for other reasons but I won't get into that here. My only aim is to help posters get help by reducing the "what do you mean by..." responses

I'm not getting into the why, but I'll try to help with general improvement.

There are others, but here's a free application that runs on MacOS. Readability helps with one of the major issues, guess which one. It allows the user to select a use case for their article, letter, or text of their authorship and score it against various criteria. Learning how your composition measures against the criteria and what they mean is a different challenge.

I've enclosed a screenshot of how one of my recent posts measures up.

And yes I know many word processors/text manipulation apps have this kind of functionality built-in but it can be hard to find and use. Readability's author has a bunch of free utilities available on his website. Widgetworx apps site I have no connection with the author other as a happy user.
 

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We should bear in mind 3 things here
  • English is not always a person's first language on here
  • Some people struggle with Dyslexia
  • Some people may simply not have the skillset or knowledge to explain their problem in a simple manner, especially if they have been down in the weeds for a long time. They can be quite stressed by the time they get here, or quite emotive as one post I saw recently was.

Tools, whilst useful, may not assist people in those buckets.

In general, I think it would also help if some people on here just relaxed a bit
 
Also in that bucket, people banging away on a mobile phone. And I include myself in that at times
 
I've dyslexia (ironically one of the words I struggle to spell) but I can use spell check and I can read what I've written. Some posts are just first attempt stream of consciousness mind dump which is hard to read and therefore limits the ability of other posters to respond in a helpful manner.
 
But I don't care what the reason or excuse is. If someone wants help in AAM then I think it is their sole responsibility to frame and phrase their posts as clearly as possible simply because it increases their chances of a useful outcome. Am I wrong then to try to help proactively? For those of you (Garda spokespersons, RTE commentators, TDs, etc) who don't understand the word "proactively", please consult a dictionary in a library near you.

Very specifically, I will not relax my efforts to assist posters get the best from AAM.
 
Purple said:
Some posts are just first attempt stream of consciousness mind dump which is hard to read and therefore limits the ability of other posters to respond in a helpful manner.
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Again, I've made suggestions about this in other threads.

Type it into a word processor, spell and grammar [edited] check it, check punctuation and general layout. Give it to a good English reader/speaker to scan for Es&Os. Correct as suggested. When you're happy with it, copy and paste it into AAM. [EDIT]
 
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I remember being the most junior of public servants writing reports for line managers who could not spell correctly, write legibly or even form proper sentences. The main thought of mine back then was to write the truth and suggest a recommendation.

I received a letter from a civil service department some months ago with two sentences amounting to a lengthy page and a half of foolscap. I have to say I couldn’t understand its content and I wrote back asking for its English to be translated into readable English.

Some time later a junior civil servant rang me and she admitted she couldn’t understand her manager’s letter either.

You would think because many people spend time texting etc that they should be capable of forming intelligible writing.
 
If someone wants help in AAM, then I think it is their sole responsibility to frame and phrase their posts as clearly as possible, simply because it increases their chances of a useful outcome.

There, I've punctuated your sentence, so your stream of consciousness doesn't lead you over a pedantic cliff
 
It's only your opinion and I posted it in its original form as I'd already checked the sentence and consulted with a couple of other authorities. My punctuation-free version is perfectly fine from a readability perspective. I might agree with "as possible," but that's marginal. If it doesn't help flow or readability leave it out.
 
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
 
Salvadore said:
Plus, he began a sentence with a preposition and omitted a full stop.
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Fixed the full stop thank you.

There is no rule against beginning a sentence with a preposition or a prepositional phrase. The badness about ending sentences with prepositions (as distinct from propositions) was a thing introduced by Church of England clergymen in the 18th century with nothing better to do with their time. Splitting infinitives, the unacceptability thereof, is another myth.

Modern style and grammar guides have consigned these and other grammatical myths to the trash can. So we have some bits and pieces to grateful to modern American English for.

This article is 10/12 years old.
 
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Not wrong to try and help at all, not criticising for that. Just saying there may be extenuating circumstances.
 
@mathepac, I hope my observations came across in the light-hearted spirit in which they were meant, but you did charge out of the trenches with guns blazing, although aimed downwards at your foot. Language is dynamic and it may better to present the spirit of the comment/question even if the letter of it is a bit deficient. Punctuation, though , could be very important,especially if you've ever tried to "help your Uncle Jack off a horse " The comma needs to be placed after Jack, not after uncle..
 
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