Something struck me earlier tonight: in general, people I work with always type in generally-grammatically-correct complete sentences. This includes my non-work communications with them. In contrast, it seems like more people I went to school with only capitalize words and punctuate properly when they "have" to.
There's one guy who specifically comes to mind who bucks the trend, avoiding uppercase letters and punctuation whenever possible, but he left the team quite a while ago, presumably feeling oppressed by those hideous shift and period keys. Hell, I try not to even end a sentence I write on a sticky note in a preposition.
Now, one likely reason is that everyone else writes that way, and most of our writing takes place at work, so people just get into the habit of writing things mostly correctly. That's the one I'm sticking with—peer pressure and mental conditioning. It's also possible that Microsoft tends to hire a certain type of person, so my sample set is even more skewed than I realize. Or, maybe that's just the way that things work in the professional world, and to try to compare it with people in school is futile. I have had little exposure to professionalism outside of my current job, and that doesn't seem to be the case, but I have few details upon which to make judgment.
Anyway, I wasn't really going anywhere with that post...
4 comments:
You'll appreciate this one. I was listening to a college football game on TV, and the announcer said:
"After the punt, Joe Quarterback has 1:39 to work with. Or he has 1:39 with which to work, if you don't like dangling participles."
Hahaha. Sounds like something Dennis Miller would say.
Now, do you type that way because you just always do and you like it? Or, do you type that way because everyone else does?
I usually end up matching how I type to the person I'm talking to, but I don't really know why.
I prefer reading and writing text that is at least mostly grammatically-correct, and capitalized and spelled correctly.
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