The Third Person

[crokett]

Crokett normally doesn't like when people refer to themselves in the third person. However, Crokett is writing up the assessment report he has been working on and it is full of third person references to the 'author' and the 'authors' and the 'team', etc. In this context, it seems appropriate.

Crokett's writing has suffered greatly from 15 years of email, updating trouble tickets, instant messaging etc. However he is still flabbergasted at how bad how bad some of the writing is out there, especially technical writing.

[Ed62]

Ed can relate to that.

Ed

[cabinetman]

Cabinetman thinks you are correct.
.

[poolhound]

Jon agrees 100% although as he gets paid to write he is often happy to see the lack of ability in others.

He does get very frustrated when clients send back edits to his work that dont make sense and at times he has to give in and let the clients words stand. The customer is always right

[BobSch]

Bob knows what Crokett is talking about. Bob used to have to re-write couse descriptions that supposedly intelligent course developers wrote, poorly.

[gsmittle]

Grover is also concerned at the level of writing he sees. He teaches one class full of high-achieving high school students, and has to teach them how to write a research paper. Grover wonders where in the curriculum anybody teaches formal writing.

g.

[drillman88]

Chris lives with Chris's two teenagers.Chris's two teenagers text so much that they have begun to think and talk in text abbreviations, which Chris does not like or understand.Chris is also sure they will have carpul tunnel and arthritis in both hands by the time they are 40.Chris understands Grover completely.

[crokett]

Crokett just got done running the spell check on the doc he is working on. He hates running spell check on highly technical docs. It seems to stop about every third line. He is also ashamed at how low his writing skills have sunk. He did not think it was this bad.

[shoottx]

I personally have interviewed Shoottx on this issue, he believes the failure of his ability to communicate through written correspondence was initially influenced by a math aptitude. Shoottx also stated during my interview with him, "that there is a sense of cosmic justice". After completing "Bone Head English" to escape the college confines, he now spends almost all of his time writing. A great distraction for Shoottx is to spend an afternoon building spreadsheets.

What a great person to interview!

[BobSch]

Crokett has to learn to add to the spell checker correctly-spelled words the spell checker barfs on. It took Bob awhile to figure that one out way back with Word 2.0.

[Handy Al]

HandyAl is married to a english major and technical writer. He gets lot of unasked for feedback.

[fbrend123]

Fred is a spelling and grammar wonk who has to constantly resist the temptation to correct that of other posters, even though he mostly screws it up, himself.

[crokett]

Crokett has to learn to add to the spell checker correctly-spelled words the spell checker barfs on. It took Bob awhile to figure that one out way back with Word 2.0.

Crokett knows how to train the spell checker. The problem is there are LOTS of technical termps that are extremely specific. For instance, 4GBps is VERY different from 4Gbps. As far as Crokett knows there is not a way to get the spell checker to recognize the differenc and when to apply it.

[germdoc]

The third person is one thing, but if Crockett starts referring to himself using the royal "We" the rest of us will be concerned...

[crokett]

The third person is one thing, but if Crockett starts referring to himself using the royal "We" the rest of us will be concerned...

Actually, that is how he talks when he is home. As in "We are hungry, what is for dinner?" Doesn't everybody?