[Sussex] Grammar (was Gnupg and it's use)

[Steve Dobson]

Mark

On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 06:24:00PM +0000, Mark Harrison (Groups) wrote:
> When it comes to human-readable stuff, however, my view is that the
> ability to communicate effectively is far more important than the need
> to communicate with perfect syntax. An extreme example of this might be,
> of all people, John Prescott. Whenever you see his quotes written down,
> then they come over as bizarre and unstructured. Whenever you seem him
> talking to camera, however, you are left in no doubt as to what he
> meant, nor that he is passionate about his committed beliefs. As such, I
> admire his communication skills rather than berate them (much as I
> disagree with his politics.)

With this I agree.  Man's (or is it Mans' - maybe I should use "Mankind's")
ability to communicate is her most important invention.

> The other filter I use is "how much does person X contribute to the
> list". For example, I would forgive Steve Dobson almost unlimited abuse
> of the apostrophe, the semi-colon, and even the Oxford comma, because of
> his vast technical knowledge, and his willingness to help people by
> sharing that knowledge. (In Steve's case, the matter seldom arises in
> any case - his use of language is well above the "easy to parse"
> threshold :-) )

Why thank you Mark.  I do my best.

I also think that trying to decrypt "bad" English does not help someone
who is also trying to get to grips with a complex subject.

Steve
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