The random misspellings, missing spaces, sloppy grammar, etc in the examples in the article seem different to me. Misspelling "en route" as "enriewu" doesn't show, "look, I know the secret country club spelling for en route". It simply shows that you don't have to care about your mistakes. You write something that approximates what you mean, and you're too important to spend time revising. The mistake could be "enrout" or "n route" or on any other word. But you're not going to be a try-hard who edits and frets over their messages, you're blessing someone with 10 seconds of your attention and they're lucky to receive your correspondence, typos and all.
And over years, sloppy typing (forgivable) evolves into sloppy thinking.
Sometimes I'll notice right after, delete and re-reply (social media) other times I'll just let it be... It's pedantic busy bodies that will single you out for a typo as opposed to discussing the idea at hand.
Interesting, is that the equivalent of billionaires wearing sweatpants?
I see what you did there. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
As to fillet and valet, they joined english before the contemporary french pronunciation, and are much closer to the middle-french.
My favorite is probably crepe, which Americans pronounce like an almost diphthong-y craype (or crape like grape I guess) when crep (like step) would do just fine and be closer to the original.
But as a native French and basically-native American speaker, I also couldn't really care less about it, or about things like Americans pronouncing the t in croissant, or French people being unable to say the.
I say it the American way when I speak English anyway because that's just how it is. :)
See also: Cairo, IL or Versailles, KY...
Fontainebleau State Park -> Fountain Blue State Park
These were two off the ones that really stood out from my travels.
If there were just French words pronounced in a French way and English words which came from French and are now pronounced in an English way that would be bad enough but in fact we have a whole spectrum of bastardisation.
It's not always that way though, consider 'niche': it's AmE that decided it's 'nitch'!
Fillet/valet are mis-pronounced because of mallet, pallet, etc. Renaissance? Nail, snail, tail, etc.
It really is that simple, we're just pronouncing them as if they were an English word.
That explains why many years ago when I visited Portland, a homeless guy corrected my pronunciation of that while we were walking past him.
Imaging me fresh from USSR asking someone how do I get to ... and getting blank stare
Maybe there's also an interesting thread to pull on in that the pattern may be more pronounced for names (e.g. Hughes). Just ruminating here though, I don't have a source for any of this.
How about Sequim, WA. Guess how to pronounciate that.
(Yonge, [jʌŋ], [jɑndʒ]); (Strachan, [sdʒɹɑn], [ˈsdʒɹa.tʃæn]); (Tecumseth, [tə.ˈkʌm.zi], [ˈti.kəm.sɛθ]); (Markham, [ˈmɑr.kʌm], [ˈmɑrk.hæm]), (Etobicoke, [ɛ.ˈtoʊ.bɪ.koʊ], [ɛ.ˈtoʊ.bɪ.koʊk]).
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2cyg6bFeRc , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PmeDWvwD8M
Etobicoke. From Adobigok [1]
Tecumseh (or Tecumseth). From tecumtha or takhamehse [2]
Mississauga. From Misi-zaagiing [3]
[1] https://www.etobicokehistorical.com/brief-history-of-etobico...
But the TV news reporters enunciate every letter in Toronto.
More like PLIM-uth. I guess there is no way to write it unambiguously in English
This is a monstrous crime against language.
If the game is wearing a $20k watch or understanding the covert signs of status that you might find in a particular community, that's something different.
yeah, people code switch, but i have come across many many people who just say things differently from the majority pronunciation. they’re not misunderstood and they can communicate just fine (see nucular vs nuclear). that’s just how language works, right
I hear people say "ask" and people say "aks". I hear both, and I see there's a difference. In your mind people who say "aks" can't see there's two variants. Why not? You're being patronising. I think they do and they make a choice, like I do. I COULD start saying "aks" and choose not to.
What next, are you going to argue that people who wear their pants down by their knees don't know that's not how you use pants? I think they know there's alternatives, and that's what they choose to do.
It is funny that spelling and grammar matter more when writing to an admissions officer than to a potential business partner. But it’s also funny to imagine a world where you could send in an essay with a bunch of typos and grammar mistakes and expect it not to influence your application.
Spelling and grammar matter in the sense that they are a signal that you know a complicated and somewhat arbitrary set of rules and have agreed to follow them.
Things that matter in academia world don't always matter in the real world and vice versa.
The old one; what's the difference between academia and the real world?
In academia, there is no difference.
Not sure I agree. I remember e-mails being capitalized and punctuated.
It's not so much typos and laziness as much as incomplete thoughts and distraction. Communication as a whole has devolved from an e-mail with a complete thought and some details to a text or chat message without capitalization, punctuation or context.
The lack of capitalization and punctuation are just a tell to me that the sender didn't put thought into it.
I can't tell you how many times I get a chat message asking a question. I in return ask questions about context, and explain why I'm asking. Then the original sender gets annoyed and provides context. Then I ask more questions. Then the original sender gets quiet. Then I get an invite to a meeting to discuss with a wider audience.
Then the original sender gets quiet. Then I get an invite to a meeting to discuss with a
wider audience.
I make an effort to use correct spelling and grammar in everything I write that's longer than "ok i'll check when at office", but sometimes it slips past. People still seem to understand what I'm telling them, though, and that's the ultimate goal.
Ima call bullshit on this. Read the published letters of some historical figures.
You see it start to change with the telegraph on down to where we are today.
Telegrams were paid by the word, and were all uppercase by design, they're not an evolution of language. It took more effort to adapt your message to a telegram than to write a proper sentence.
I wouldn't spend nearly as much effort on something ephemeral and instant. For instance, I'm not going to mail my sister in another state a letter saying "ok thanks". I very while might text her that, because 1) she knows exactly what I'm referring to — the thing we were talking about 11 seconds earlier; 2) the customs of messaging mean she doesn't expect or want a wall of text; and 3) if she has any more questions, she can ask them and I'll reply within a minute or two.
The modern devolution of spelling is just not giving a fuck about norms and courtesy.
"Dictated but not read."
There is a time pressure to communicate this way, but I think it's generally a management mistake:
Managment includes leadership (usually). Your messages are most of what most people in the organization see of you. You set the high bar; nobody will prioritize quality and attention to detail more than you. And that standard is global IME - you can't very effectively set the example that messages can be sloppy but nothing else.
For messages to my social inner circle, for example, I am much less careful - misspellings, abbreviations, etc. For messages to people I manage or lead, I make sure it's perfect every time.
Messages to a single vice president get much less care.
Lmao. If you think these people are busy, I have news for you.
And their class all recognize it. Possibly it's a class marker.
Here, I have to carefully articulate my point because I am desperately trying to convince you not to carry water for the Epstein a class.
I'm not sure I understand.
I don't think Larry Summers was fired for hanging out with Epstein and talking terribly about women with him; I'm sure plenty of people knew that he was an Epstein-type and hung in Epstein-type circles, and he publicly said horrible things about women's capacities, to people he barely knew.
I think he was fired for sounding like a subnormal reddit dweller. Simply seeming like a mediocre dumb guy. The idea that he was teaching their precious children was simply repellent to Harvard alums. It makes it even more of an obscenity that he was in charge of the government response to the housing bubble, and for running up the stock market in the late 90s. It's so much worse when you confirm the awful acts were done by an actually dumb guy.
You want to fool yourself into thinking that these monsters were trapped by some bad premise within some elaborately reasoned theory or at least unfortunately tripped up by a sign error or a transposed digit buried somewhere. Nope, just a guy whose job is to sit in a chair with a bunch of qualifying paper around his name, and do the things that his backers pay him to do. An elite robosigner. They're not even charming or handsome.
FWIW I don't have a problem with it at all. As the article mentioned there's an aspect of power politics (I'm important enough not to have to worry about formatting). But to me instead of <I wish elites weren't so callous with text> I feel <everyone should feel empowered to write like that> (again, maybe not quite to the level of Epstein, but e.g. capitalisation is just unimportant. Signing off emails with "best wishes" is not a good use of anyone's 500 milliseconds).
Yet I'm on Twitter reading "Prison for attempted murderer enablers like this clown" by the world's richest man who is tweeting all day. My guess is that it has just become a way of status signalling more than anything else.
The founders said it was very 'senior' of him and laughed about it. But it's also kind of indicative of seniority because senior people aren't wasting time looking up the correct spelling of a company name - they get the email out with the salient details with the right amount of time invested into it. You want to be dialed in but also if you're doing lots of stuff at scale it doesn't really matter what the name of the startup is. Ideally you did the right diligence before the decision to invest was made but then at that point only a few key things matter and are worth keeping in hot memory any more - things like where the founders went to college (in case it helps with a future connection), what the market is (in case it helps with a future connection), what they need help with (in case it can be brought up with a connection), etc...
If the delta is simply "cognitive load" then we're back to the theory I already posted.
Gotta be really incredibly efficient while planning your time on Epstein Island doing Epstein Class things to Epstein girls.
These world changing guys clearly have no spare time on their hands at all.
Or at the very least, the things we tell ourselves are meritorious are not what actually what causes people to rise to the top of our society.
By the way I'm also astonished by their lack of taste. The Epstein properties give off a sinister vibe as one would expect, but watching -- for instance -- Architectural Digest videos you get the impression that either the property has been professionally staged with pottery barn/cb2 esthetic or it was decorated with painting-of-dogs-playing-poker levels of sophistication.
Not surprising I guess but you'd think someone with essentially unlimited budget who has complete dominion over their own time wouldn't end up living in an enormous, expensive, alienating ugg boot.
It is bunk. Nobody who has even a modicum of critical thinking ability thinks that Donald Trump or Elon Musk are geniuses.
Luck and circumstance are an immense part of success.
Competence in a senior position is a threat to an incompetocracy. It's more important you be stupid and loyal than be good.
You can’t really understand Trump’s decisions unless you understand that despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump himself truly believes he is the smartest person in the room, regardless of who else is in it; and he will not suffer anyone who dares to contradict him.
I actually believe he has a crippling inferiority complex, which is why he leans so hard into bluster and bravado, why he surrounds himself with incompetent sycophants, and also why he's so vicious at even a hint of being slighted.
I think he probably knows, deep down, that he's mid at best and his most deep-seated fear is being perceived as insufficiently masculine, intelligent, powerful, wealthy, etc.
Ive worked in organizations like that where EVERYBODY knew something was a bad idea but upper management wanted to do it anyway. At some point you get frozen out if you dissent and nobody gives two halfs of a fuck about when it turns out you were right. Conformity is all that matters.
Even so a few people do publicly dissent.
but spelling and grammar still isn't a good indicator for expertise, intelligence or anything like that even in an academic context
Mainly:
1. Dyslexia doesn't make you dump, just likely to misspell and a less likely to notice your misspelling.
2. When speaking about neurodivergence people mainly think about Autism or ADHD but sometimes just mean that your brain thinks in very different patters, this can make grammar hard. Especially if it's not your native language.
3. Sometimes people had shitty situations earlier in their live, leading to incorrectly learning parts of languages. This is hard to fix. But isn't really representative in any way for their expertise in any topic which isn't the given languages grammar.
4. English grammar and pronunciation to spelling mapping aren't exactly well designed. People not wanting to bother with it is not really related to intelligence, or excellence in other topics.
5. Some kinds of expertise are unrelated to general intelligence, expertise, education. So even if spelling and grammar where related to intelligence, it wouldn't be meaningful to judge expertise.
I worked with a tech founder at one point in my life, and I once happened to get a glance at his undergrad college transcripts which were, for reasons unknown, just sitting out on his desk. It was all Ds and Cs. He barely graduated! Yet his networth was more than the combined net worth of all of his employees.
But my diploma still says "UC Berkeley" on it, just like the guys with the 3.9 GPA. And when I hang out with PhD friends' PhD friends, they just assume I'm a PhD too.
So what I'm saying is that sometimes smart people don't put a lot of effort into school.
I can't tell my kid with a straight face, "Work hard, study, get good grades in school, and focus on a good career" when I know it's fucking bullshit. And what I should be saying is "Sorry that I'm not rich and well connected--since that would have been the outsized predictor of your life success."
If your theory is correct and the global elite really isn't significantly smarter than the average population then the next question is, how are they maintaining their spots against smarter competitors?
This question is only difficult to answer if we believe that our system operates on merit. A system that operates on power, connections, and backroom favors happily maintains the status of mediocre people.
Blackmail, lying, cunning, manipulation, backstabbing, machiavellianism, etc,
You need to be intelligent at these, above all else.
And corruption of power is the cause, I suspect. It has poisoned human minds in all places and times; none of us are immune (which is why we design governments that limit individual power). An early lesson in being in charge was that, having nobody to whom I reported, who would see my work and compel me to a high standard, I let things slip.
Reportees rarely help you: Often they don't know what you do; when they do see it, they assume it's acceptable - you know what you want, and you set the standard of quality and establish the norms. Generally they have obvious disincentives against disapproving of you, and not just as some political tactic but for personal comfort: days are much more pleasant if your boss is friendly. They will give positive or at least non-negative responses to most substandard boss work.
I had to learn to think of it in two ways: First, would I accept this work from someone reporting to me? Second, I internalized the medium- and long-term consequences of substandard leadership and management: once your organization has caught that disease, once that's your reputation, it's very hard to change.
Reminds me how I double and triple check the emails I sent out to the higher ups in the company to make sure spelling and language tone was good, while in his emails Epstein was like "wazzup retards, kiddie fiddling party at my place" and getting replies from 3 world leaders and 5 CEOs. Then him and Israel's' former PM were both struggling to spell PALANTIR over the phone. It's a big club and you're not in it.
For most of us, grammar is a proxy for competence. We proofread because a mistake could cost us a grade, client, or a job. But the ultra-rich are basically operating post-economically. They aren’t trying to advance; they started rich and they’ll end rich, so they have absolutely no one to impress (and certainly not you).
When you grow up in an environment where friction is historically outsourced—where papers are bought, tutors do the heavy lifting, or SATs are taken by proxies—you never really get held to the same operational standards. You just learn to slop it across the finish line because the consequences for failure are zero.
So who are they trying to impress with their grammar? Nobody. It actually becomes a display of asymmetric leverage. Taking the time to craft a perfect, well-punctuated email screams, "I spent my valuable time optimizing this for you." A typo-ridden, lowercase, one-sentence reply sends the exact opposite message. It establishes a power dynamic where their two seconds of raw attention is the most valuable commodity in the exchange. Following spelling conventions is just middle-class anxiety; sloppiness is the flex. All conventions are for the plebs anyway.
Plus, low-fidelity communication gives them incredible optionality. A garbled, ambiguous text provides perpetual wiggle room. They weren't late or wrong, it was just a typo. It allows them to remain completely non-committal—just another way to maintain high status while shedding any actual accountability.
* Very time-consuming, especially for edits/corrections
* Lacks functionality (where is undo? the right/left arrow keys?) and other functionality is very poor (mouse/pointer control)
* Frustrating!
* Consumes attention: I can type on a full keyboard while looking elsewhere - including talking to someone else, though of course all actions suffer. On full keyboards I can type while reading something, to transcribe it, or I can just watch the output. Or just imagine using keyboard-based commands (e.g., Vim) on a smartphone.
I've tried alternative screen keyboards and they are a bit better, but it still sucks a lot.
Phones will always be miserable - but they are the least miserable option in a lot of situations and so I expect people to use them a lot just because the other tools are even worse.
For heavy typers, physical keyboards in candybar phones (.e.g, old Blackberrys, etc.) and landscape-oriented clamshells fix many issues, but those are outre for some reason. Even on-screen UIs could be better. Just arrow keys to move to the cursor precisely would be a signficant improvement.
IRC was a literate culture, owing to its roots in the physical medium of the typewriter. It imposed technical barriers to entry selecting for a minimum of intelligence.
After kneecapping the literate media by destroying this input mechanism with touch screens, the audiovisual media flooded in to fill the vacuum - and brought with it the illiterate masses who now all see themselves as amateur videographers, unencumbered from the previous burdens of needing to "read the fucking manual."
I use a bluetooth keyboard for typing on my phone unless I'm out in the world. The number of people who want to have long-form conversations through a phone interface is shocking to me since it's such an awful experience and there are so, so many available alternatives.
As a side note, I grew up in the era of typewriters and cursive and that "interface" was utterly miserable - composing at the typewriter was considered bad, a fair portion of people couldn't type and typists would/could be hired for various tasks. I was vastly heartened when PCs with word processors became available at the college computer center senior. I think text processing interfaces reach their apex around 2000s (fusing power and usability) but when something gets to certain optimality, it can only go down and that where phones are.
my dad (in his 80s) ends 50%+ of his sentences in an ellipses. most people i know my age find it a bit jarring (is he mad? expecting more information?). and its not just him, ive met several people around the same age who have a similar habit in their writing.
so, when i had a similar conversation about coming across as rigid/negative with my emails, i figured it was a similar phenomenon between the younger generation and my generation as my generation and my dads. now i typically end with a "thanks!" to coworkers instead of "thanks.". not a big deal for me if it makes other people happier.
em dash isn't on the keyboard, where do you even find it?
people love talking to them
being a non-native english speaker, removing capitalization from my writing removed a ton of anxiety when writing text and didn't change at all the landing of my messages or my ideas.
This comment is just so much, all by virtue of caps lock.
ວИIᑫᑫAЯWYᗺວИITIЯWƎUИITИOƆUOYᗺƎЯƎHW
LINESINREVERSE
Capitalization makes it easy for the reader to know where a concept ends and a new one begins. Without capitalization, your comment reads like a run-on sentence - a period in my display is 2px tall while a comma is 3.5px tall, the lack of capitalization makes my brain read them all as commas, and therefore your text is harder for me to parse. So I'd say yes, removing capitals did change the landing of your ideas for the worse.
It was flabbergasting..
Technically I should wait a day to hey the reply button here. I don't see anything wrong with this post now, but it is a reasonable bet that there is something that someone else sees.
Haha, yeah. I was face palming some obvious typos in an important email earlier. Even after reading it four times. I find this helps in writing music as well. I come back a day later and so many things stick out that my brain would just gloss over.
right, because i couldn't have adopted this writing style in the past few weeks.
to address your second point, i could probably make better use of punctuation, but the original message is still delivered without all the fluff IMO.
Ignorance of why something exists is not a good enough reason to destroy it.
This doesn't apply to capitalisation, but generally especially in computing if there's something that looks useless you should remove it. If it breaks the fault lies with whomever left something useless there without a note to explain it.
The current project I'm working on has about 3 copies of every component because nobody bothers to clear up after themselves - dead code isn't doing any harm and it's better to leave it in case it's needed right?
Well sure, if you want me to work about 3x slower than I otherwise could. Not an exaggeration.
The client won’t care, it’s your company who broke their system.
IT IS THE WAY OF OUR FOUNCERS
If you're going to qualify capitalization as an arbitrary rule, then it wouldn't matter if it's all lowercase or all uppercase. It's not a whim of scholars, it improves readability, it emphasizes, it carries meaning.
All uppercase looks loud today, but early computers were also all uppercase and it was normal. All lowercase looks bland and sloppy, only a few steps removed from "what u doing lol?" texting shorthand.