Hacker News Reader

Comment by mastazi | Hacker News Reader

I am a migrant from a non-English-speaking country, and I used to be a journalist a long time ago. Even though I migrated many years ago, I am still surprised when I see spelling mistakes like the one in this article, which is right up there in the deck (the line just under the headline). Back in Italy, someone would be having a bad day over something like this, but in the English-speaking world it seems to be commonplace, even in major publications, corporate websites, etc.

> Before Facebook or Twitter, there was Diaryland. But it’s creator just wasn’t a Zuckerberg and it faded into oblivion.

I think that this is because English ortography is highly nonphonemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography

It's an interesting topic!

View on HN

It’s mostly because of laziness and a hostility toward the idea of “correctness” in language use, and it goes back many, many decades. See John Simon’s book Paradigms Lost (from 1981!) for a brutally amusing take on these common errors.

When it becomes socially unacceptable to insist on standards and correctness, people either don’t learn how to write properly - or they are cowed into silence when making corrections.

What problem does this kind of correctness solve? We all understand what is meant by the sentence despite the flaw. I'm reasonably proficient at English when compared to my colleagues but unless they've made an error that dramatically changes the meaning of their sentence, correcting it achieves nothing in my experience.

Because language isn’t about being understood by the lowest common denominator, it’s about expressing ideas and feelings. Sloppiness of language results in sloppiness of thought. If language were purely about being understood by others, then we culd rite lyke dis all da tyme.

It is also just disgraceful and disrespectful toward something as magnificent and powerful as language, akin to scribbling on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It’s one thing to know the rules and intelligently break them in a novel way, but the lack of correctness we’re talking about is merely laziness.

Just to reiterate here: the issue isn’t so much about minor unintended errors, it’s about the attitude that minor errors are acceptable and that aspiring for some kind of excellence is discouraged.

> it’s about expressing ideas and feelings

Yes, and spelling errors don't really matter to express yourself.

> disgraceful and disrespectful toward something as magnificent and powerful as language

If language wants to take that up with me, send him or her over to my place and I'll beat 'em up! But seriously, language is a tool, it's not a work of art. Things you make with language can be a work of art, so go read those instead of the misspelled crap that drives you to this level of anger.

> it’s about the attitude

You need to chill about other people's attitudes. You cannot affect other people, and you shouldn't let them make you see red like this. Other people's opinions and attitudes are none of your business, frankly.

This is exactly the reply that always comes when someone defends standards. Every time.

“It’s none of your business. Don’t worry about other people. Why are you so angry?” Etc.

I speak English and am a part of a culture that speaks English. That gives me some extremely minor influence on that culture, as it does for you and anyone else. So I certainly can “affect other people.”

Is it so hard to believe that some people like nice things, and that creating and maintaining nice things often requires adhering to certain rules and regulations, rather than unquestioning acceptance of the selfish whims of every individual?

Maybe become an English teacher then, instead of ranting and raving in public. Go get a job as an editor at a paper and raise the standards. Do something like that, rather than get into other people's business.

People act like this about folks who police arbitrary standards because it's distasteful. English is what the whole body of humans who speak English make it, not some random Council of English Grammar. Anytime I write or say anything, it's English, no matter if I fucked the grammer or speeling up.

There should not be a monopoly on communication. Some people simply don't have the ability to do perfect English grammar. Neurodiverse people can have trouble saying the right thing or using the write words. I hope you understand that not only do people hate "grammar police" because you're annoying, but also because not everyone can, needs, or wants to speak perfect English.

In closing: stop being pedantic, no one likes it. I hope all my errors keep you up at night.

I'm not responding further, this conversation has run it's course.

As I said in my original comment:

When it becomes socially unacceptable to insist on standards and correctness, people either don’t learn how to write properly - or they are cowed into silence when making corrections.

> In closing: stop being pedantic, no one likes it.

You're wrong there.

Also, kinda inadvertently proved the parent's point: that people rush out of the woodwork to cow everyone else into silence.

> There should not be a monopoly on communication.

So why are you trying to enforce your standards on someone else?

> So why are you trying to enforce your standards on someone else?

Dude, he can speak all the proper English he wants. I’m not enforcing anything on anyone, I’m saying keep your nose out of other peoples grammar. You people give me a migraine daily, Jesus H Christ. I’m done here, you folks are insane.

> You people give me a migraine daily,

Does this not indicate, to you, that you're holding a significant minority opinion? While neither significant minority or significant majority opinions are automatically wrong/right, if you're reacting this strongly to everyone around you, the only common factor is you.

IOW, when I find that I am at odds with everyone around me, I re-examine whether or not the problem is me: did I incorrectly read the room?

For example, sarcastic comments on reddit r/programming garners no real attention from the readers, while the same comment on HN gets downvoted.

What I am trying to say is, read the room.

BTW: you are reacting pretty emotionally to my posts, which are all (as far as I can tell, anyway) devoid of any emotion or personal remarks. GP's original complaint was also, as far as I can tell, devoid of any anger or other emotion. Your reaction was, to me, very angry with no real reason why this was so.

Some of us are just trying to make it to tomorrow, next week, next month or next quarter. Spare a thought for them. I'm glad you have the time and mental energy to pontificate about the beauty of language, but language is a tool just as much as an art. The Sistine Chapel is ultimately a church to be used in worship.

This line of thought can be used to dismiss pretty much everything other than purely utilitarian subsistence activities. Why pontificate about mathematics, or science, or food, or anything at all when some people can’t make it through the day? Why not live in concrete boxes and eat nutritious flavorless goop?

Even then - yes, if you want to treat it as purely a pragmatic thing, then it’s kind of important to everyone to have the same set of rules to follow. Unless you want a church comprised of people that can’t communicate with each other because their language isn’t standardized?

This already happened in the 19th century, when spoken languages had many orthographic variations. The reason we have rules like the ones we do now is because it was a problem that needed to be solved. When you have fifty different ways of writing grammatical rules down, it becomes difficult to communicate.

> can’t communicate with each other because their language isn’t standardized

Uh, you mean "standardised"? :-P

My kid is learning to read right now and the amount of exceptions I keep tripping over is crazy. And then you get things like Jabberwocky where undefined words never seen before were a large part of the point.

Things need to be "standardised enough" for the message to get across, but I'd cry if it were a 100% completely detailed specification.

Sorry but, what is the mistake on the highlighted sentence? I'm not a native english speaker.

The second sentence contains "it's" instead of "its".

Which is a stupid irregular rule that should be abandoned!

"it's" just means "it is"

for everything else, there's "its"

I believe that will get you out of 99% of the "it's vs its" problems you find in day to day life.

Bonus: If you're almost sure you need "it's" but not totally, just read the sentence as "...blah blah IT IS blah blah..." and if that doesn't make sense use "its" instead.

Edit: Some would gatekeep English, I don't personally care except that it seemed to give you a lot of stress and I hate to see someone upset, truly, so I thought I might help. I have a lot of trouble with grammar rules, too, so I have certain ways of thinking that I figure could help you and others. In reality, its or it's will read the same in your head and have further context as you read, so it doesn't really matter.

> "it's" just means "it is"

> for everything else, there's "its"

"it's" can also mean "it has".

I understand contractions, but “its” doesn’t track with possessive nouns, which is why this is such a pervasive “error”. English has some dumb rules that we don’t need to protect.

I think I am a native speaker - Australian, is that "native" English? But I digress... - and I couldn't spot the error. I was going to write the same as your comment.

Maybe the fact that english is so damn flexible with so many exceptions and patterns I just saw what was intended and rolled with it without even registering?!?

The top comments are going nuts over "it's" ?!? Really? I didn't even blink.

When the top comments talked about the error I reread the line a few times and saw zero issues with it.

The words flowing out of my brain say it is a "referential possessive" IE "it" in this case refers to the last noun referenced, and it has a singular relationship bound to the creator.

Yes it reverses the traditional concept of ownership (normally the creator owns the product) but that is the whole point - the website seemed to have a life of it's own and has been a burden/boon to the creator these past many years - so who really owns who in that relationship?

So yeah, looked up the Its vs It's and supposedly it should be its. But I honestly still understood perfectly what it was conveying so I'm fine with it either way.

Dr. Geoff Lindsey just put out an interesting video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6duEGj04Mg

not tldr but provocative thought derived: why insist that "it's" as a possessive is wrong, when it follows an existing pattern (john's, everyone's) and speech doesn't make the distinction?

I have to say the constant nitpicking and derailing over spelling/grammar mistakes in German forums is something I don't miss at all.

Is this a very subtle "Grammar Nazi" joke or an actual thing that happens?

Actual thing that happens.

Forums should have separate layers for the object-level discussion, and meta-discussion. Then people can zoom into a peculiar grammatical detail that takes their fancy, but the main thread of a topic can keep going uninterrupted.

Then if a grammar discussion comes to a conclusion (as decided by the forum owner/editor-in-chief) it gets enforced on main threads thenceforth.

(my reply would go on the meta layer)

Polish forums were the same. You'd have someone make a spelling error and everyone would just disregard their argument.

To be clear, you’re talking about it’s instead of the correct its, right?

Yeah same here. The amount of times I've seen "should of" is really staggering. How can you make this mistake in the first place?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com