Old-fashioned me

We had sume geust letcurers over at the college the ohter day. some intreesting presentations, I have to amdit. Beside remainding me of hou strainng it is to be a stjudent and having to siit and litsen an entir day to somebdy presinting in the fornt (yes, iwas in the audience for change), the expeirence also tauht me that powrful PowerPoints are not al that evident.

Apart from that, I cannot say I was not just a little bit annoyed by the (many) typos in some of the presentations I saw. Weren't you just now, reading the paragraph above? Exactly... For the people who know Dutch: the dreaded 'dt error' was available too, in different sizes and colours. Not to mention the lack of capitals where needed, or just plainly misspelled words.

I know: I'm blinkered when it comes to Dutch. And young people don't really care that much about spelling; who needs it when you read text messages anyway? But frankly, I don't give a donkey's arse about arguments like that.

When you present, you are there for and because of your audience. You reserve their respect, but the same goes vice versa. And the least you can do, is not make their brains do overtime by drawing their attention away from your message by slightly (or not so slightly) annoying mistakes. Mind: everybody makes mistakes. Yes, so do I. But at least don't make people think you didn't want to take the time to check your slides and remove the mistakes as much as possible. My guess is peopel wil feal mutch more apreccitaed!

Note: this post is not about any of the presentations in particular. Besides: my guess is nobody reads this blog anyway, so they'll never know... :-)

Comments

[Bart]

Glad I didn't present :)

[Pietel]

Yeah typos... I'm not even from the SMS generation, but I'm really not into spelling. I'm the opposite of the many spelling fascists out there.

If you look at the amount of content we produce on a daily basis, it's a different approach to the old days. No time for a second view nor correction. It's either that, either declining last minute requests to present without billable hours. :)

[Trom Boone]

I was writing my post adressed to you- when I read this. I'll have to change the whole goddamn thing, Serge, just because you decided to make a very good post.

Even though you force me to do an even bigger effort, I still like it. Big Ups for Mr. Nocopy!

[Sidney]

Yes... but why do they change the grammatical rules all the time...? The very confusing c/k rules... I even don't understand the point of d/t/dt grammatical rules... do we just do this to make the language a bit more difficult for everybody?

Serge... I know you are a busy man... but you should check your posts for typos... I am very annoyed today by your lack of respect for your readers!

[Serge]

@ Bart: personally I think it is a pity you didn't present. And I am sure I would not have found many typos or spelling errors, if any at all...
@ Pietel: don't worry. I do not hold the typos against you :-), nor do I consider any of the presentations less good content-wise. But 'the good old days'? If you think 10 years ago we had more time to cock up presentations than today, you are soooo dead wrong. The attitude towards form simply has changed, because of more people producing more content. So quantity often overtakes quality, also where language is concerned. My concerns here, however, have nothing to do with spelling fascism. Actually, I even resent that reference. But like I said: I am probably an old-fashioned fart. And even with the typos I am glad you didn't decline to present without the billable hours! :-)
@Trom: thank you.
@Sidney: I agree, but 'we' did not change any of the rules. All we can do is try and follow them, and I'm even willing to be flexible in doing that. Just no dt errors. Aaaargh! ;-D And sorry for the lack of respect.

[(db)]

@Pietel Spelling, imho, is just a matter of credibility, But Google (sic) proves me wrong ;)