Comments on: The English Disease

By: Maarten

Maarten — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:13:23 +0000

Timmo, that is exactly what I’m fussing all about, although the arrogance of mis-writings to be understood correctly is less common in the places I tend to be in.
It’s mostly the commonality of the errors I listed that annoys me most, until the point I am capable of asking the people how they even get their diplomas. I’ve not done it yet, yet the thought is growing on me.

Arjen: heh, I could’ve done that up until now and still not get all errors…

By: Arjen

Arjen — Mon, 12 May 2008 07:55:19 +0000

I’m at this moment mostly worried about writing correct English.

I’m getting crazy with correcting my Thesis with a red pencil at this moment. What a mistakes

By: Timmo

Timmo — Mon, 12 May 2008 07:36:26 +0000

1) Yes, it happens (in all organizations I have been in). Some – naturally – are worse than others.

2) In general, I believe all of those bsc’s or msc’s knÃ³w what it should be, but are too lazy or – in my opinion – arrogant. Arrogant because they think – as you stated – that people will understand them anyway so why spend time on correcting texts?

3) Our policy is that any final draft of an official document – proposals, contracts, final deliverables – passes our secretary office, who always make a final sweep of the documents. I make a point of doing my own and making them do ‘useless’ work (although they always pick up sÃ³me points… it’s impossible pick up everything, but that’s not the discussion), because of exactly my disgust of this attitude, but it’s a hopeless struggle…

My personal pet peeve is ‘aantal’. People keep saying ‘er zijn een aantal ‘. It’s such an obvious sign of people not thinking even a split second about what they are saying. Unfortunately, this is exactly a case where in the end, laziness and ignorance will ‘win’ as it’s already a commonplace and thus will replace the Ã¡ctual grammar. Instead of educating people, we just lower our standards… typical!