Asytek.152 net.general utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:sri-unix!hplabs!menlo70!sytek!msm Thu Mar 11 14:32:31 1982 Grammar Article 461: From menlo70!hplabs!sri-unix!ucbvax!decvax!duke!ucf-cs!goldfarb \ Mon Mar 8 13:17:40 1982 Subject: grammar Newsgroups: net.general Why is it that we computer people abuse the English language so miserably? Daily, I observe atrocious grammmar and perverse spelling not only in work by students, but also in commercial documents, in memos from my superiors, and in submissions to this network. Where does the fault lie? I can only hope that the situation improves before it gets worse. Am I the last of the die-hard traditionalists or are there others who have similar strong feelings? Ben Goldfarb ..duke!ucf-cs!goldfarb In my opinion, there is a very simple reason why Engineers, Computer Scientists, and other technical people have such a poor command of the English Language; very few English courses are required to receive a degree from this country's universities. When I was a student at UCLA ('73-'77), only one English class was required for engineering students. That is 10 weeks out of a total of four years! Unfortunately, there is no easy cure. The engineering program at UCLA required four years of taking four classes per quarter. Any additional required classes would just lengthen the time necessary to finish the program. Michael S. Maiten <...!UCBVAX!MENLO70!SYTEK!MSM> ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.