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pedantry (was: i think my gpg is setup correctly..)



Someone sent me this privately, and I think this is a point worth
answering on-list, mainly so I don't have to do it repeatedly.  I'll
shut up about it after this.

> Just curious:
> 
> > [Ok, I'm frustrated by people's inability to use English correctly.
> 
> No matter whether or not English is the posters mother tongue?

No.  For example, the next message in the thread to which that message
was a reply was clearly written by a non-native English speaker.  It
would be silly for me to hold that against them.

ESL students rarely confuse their and there, because they typcially
learn them via book learning (i.e. they read and write them) before
they become good at pronunciation.  Native English speakers tend to
make that mistake, because we learn the words by sound well before we
learn to read and write.  There were other more subtle things about
that message which suggested that the OP was either a native speaker,
or at least conducted the vast majority of his education in an
English-speaking country.  

The case of setup vs. set up is ubiquitous, spread wildly
throughout the technical community.  That is unfortunate.

If the OP was in fact not a native English speaker, then I appologize
for taking out my frustrations on him.  Even if it were true though,
it does nothing to lessen the fact that most such mistakes I see on
mailing lists are made specifically by American native-English
speakers, nor does it lessen my frustration with my countrymen's
inability to speak (and especially to write) their native language.

Fortunately for the list, I will not go into the socio-political
reasons behind my frustrations.  Suffice it to say that I am
embarrased for my country that many of you non-native English speakers
speak and write English much better than many of my countrymen.

-- 
Derek D. Martin
http://www.pizzashack.org/
GPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D

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