Aliteracy

Periodically, all too often, there is evidence in postings that the poster has not read the documentation for a product, or, in some cases (most of us have been guilty at some time), is too "tired" to check someting out in documentation.

Rather than pick on a particular poster, I thought that it might interesting to point folkes to the following article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23370-2001May13?language=printer

 

A very interesting article with a lot of food for thought and some of it perhaps a littly scary. For those of us who are in the older category some things that happen these days seem just wrong but one has to remember that everything changes. For the better, not necessarily, but difficult to stop. For example, I detest the shorthand the text messagers use and a lack of punctuation and capitalization really bugs me. I wonder though if I did text messaging, how long would it be before "ur" was preferred over "you are"?

In my previous life, I used to shudder when somebody complained that the manual for a program or whatever "was too big and had too much stuff in it". The person wanted one page that solved their problem so they could get on with the task. I now find that the large Saturday newspaper is the one I actually read the least of because it is too darn big with too much stuff in it!

I am also amazed at how many things I read in newspaper that were covered by the television news. Maybe in slightly less detail but often with better pictures.

Now for my most serious admission, and this caused me to chuckle, I was reading your reference and I realized that I was: quickly scrolling through it picking out the salient points or at least what I thought were! I guess I am maybe with the modern generation

 

"In my previous life, I used to shudder when somebody complained that the manual for a program or whatever "was too big and had too much stuff in it"."

The first thing I look for when I open something up is the Quick Start Manual!

 

When my son started emailing me, he never used upper case letters or periods. I bought a box of upper case alphabets (actually typed the alphabet twice in upper case) and a whole bunch of periods and other punctuation marks and sent them to him in an email. After that, his messages were much easier to read.

What else was in your message? I guess I skimmed it too quickly.

 

Um, dude: it's illiteracy not aliteracy. And I couldn't agree more!

 

No, this article is about aliteracy.

 

Aliteracy and illiteracy are different words with quite different meanings.

 

How would anyone know that if they were illiterate? Or would they have to be aliterate?

 

Someone has been pulling our legs, right? Someone misstook an article about aliteracy for one about illiteracy? Suggesting they didn't look up the meaning of the word "aliterate" if it was unfamiliar to them -- ianother case of aliteracy or just a semantic prank ;-)

Luckily no one brought up nonliterate, which is a third thing altogether. Reading can not only be fun, it can be educational -- at least, that's what I read somewhere.

sh

 

Language is flawed communication to begin with as one utterance from one human can be received by another human quite differently. Add the typed or written medium to the mix and you have further ingredients for confusion.

Not to be a devil's advocate, but honestly some people here do not choose to fritter away sifting through reams of paper or thousands of threads looking for the answer to the one specific issue they are trying to address. They appeal to others to assist and possibly rely upon human nature to lend a helping hand regardless of aliteracy/etc.

Though I do agree that it doesn't hurt to Read The Friendly Manual. Some parable about treating others how I would like to be treated always seems to haunt me.

Speaking of manuals, if you purchase Acronis True Image 9 you'll receive a large cardboard box with only the software CD inside. It is required to printout the user manual which is a small .pdf file. Saves some trees and costs less expense for Acronis.

 

What happened to my reply here?

 

I guess that it's possible my fat fingers screwed up in posting.
I should have saved a copy before posting.

 

I had almost posted about the same as LWM did earlier - I couldn't see anything having been removed either. Anyway; stuff like that happens to us all