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Originally Posted by Stitchawl
As I think most of us understood the above perfectly, I'd say following exacting grammar rules to be a bit outdated. I think the image below proves the same point with spelling.
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No, not really - other versions of this point out that only 55 people out of 100 can read it. Although I'd question the figures, it has been shown that such images are legible only to good readers; poor readers struggle with them. It also depends on the language - English has relatively little redundancy, so it's still fairly easy to make out most words; a similar task with other languages, particularly Hebrew, is much more difficult. The basic premise behind this and other examples - that it doesn't matter about the order as long as the first and last letters are correct - has also been shown to be wrong:
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/...vis/cmabridge/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stitchawl
Spending most of my life in academia, I found waaaay too many people concerned more about grammar and spelling than about content. To me, that is just wrong on so many levels, and all too often wipes out that spark of desire to 'learn' that brings people to higher education in the first place.
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That argument has been used for years to dumb down the UK education system; in recent years, the pendulum has swung back, and it's now recognised that having a good grounding in the basics of the language (preferably at a very young age, when children pick these things up very quickly) produces more imaginative work, because it then becomes what it should be - a mere tool, a way of communicating more effectively, rather than something that stymies people every time they try to string a sentence together.