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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think that it is very unfair, to pick someone up on spelling or grammar, just because you disagree with what they are saying.

336 replies

smokepole · 02/06/2014 15:12

I posted recently on a ongoing topic in this section, I was picked up for my "appalling" grammar, my use of punctuation and for my sentence construction. I noticed that when my opinion changed , strangely enough my grammar or incorrect use of exclamation marks was not picked up upon. I have noticed that this happened on other threads as well. I think this is wrong for two reasons, the first being that it is a kind of bullying, intimating that because someone struggles with spelling, punctuation or correct sentence construction, that there are thick, therefore their argument or view point does not stand up. The other point it is very unfair to pick people up who have not benefited from higher education, or in my case not even education post GCSE'S, people need to realise this and accept that they have been fortunate to have been able to access higher education, but they need to give people like me some slack over my poor grammar or sentence construction.

OP posts:
ComposHat · 04/06/2014 18:19

Grrrr.

ChelsyHandy · 04/06/2014 18:51

Fascicle you really need more attention to detail.

I recently got gegot a letter from the NHS containing two spelling mistakes, one of which changed the meaning of what I think they were trying to say. I knew what they meant, but it made me nervous about a forthcoming procedure, in that I got the impression their competency might be low, or they might be slapdash and careless.

This does not "speculate about a letter a surgeon may [or may not] have written. It comments on a letter received from an NHS Trust. Not a surgeon or doctor.

This point by me: I would expect a doctor or surgeon to have a good general education including good literary skills as well as in medicine

was in response to another post by a different poster talking about whether the lack of spelling in surgeons and doctors generically would concern me.

As you well know. I am sure that you are capable of distinguishing between one post and a different post, so the question arises, what agenda do you have to try and make it seem as if someone has written something that they have not done, in order to make a very specific point?

So why bother speculating about the doctor's 'literary skills' (that's not the same as literacy skills, by the way), following a letter regarding your procedure, if you now think the letter was a 'generic admin response'?

I repeat. Nowhere have I speculated about a doctor or surgeon's personal literacy or literary skills. I am fully aware that they do not generally write letters themselves. I am sure you are capable of distinguishing between two different posts, as it has obviously taken you quite a lot of time to trawl through my individual posts and cut and paste them in a way which is misleading in that it suggests they comment successively on a specific subject which I never commented on in the first place.

I didn't suggest that you weren't capable. But if you're implying that an imperfect letter might be correlated to a slapdash procedure, that would indicate that you haven't yet done the research that matters - the success of the procedure in relation to the hospital and surgeon. If you had, your concerns about letter writing would become less relevant

Am I indeed? I don't agree that it would, whether that is or is not the case. However, I could imagine it being led as a small piece of evidence in a medical negligence case, other circumstances being compelling, so I have to say that you are wrong in what you say. Why it should have any bearing on your imagined lack of research on a person's medical treatment, I have no idea. Your reasoning is flawed because it is so far removed from the point you are trying to make. I really do think that it implies more that you have some kind of agenda, and that you are not being entirely honest. That is a suspicion on my part, and one which may be wrong, but its such an odd way to respond that I think it reasonable to form that question.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 04/06/2014 19:58

Mmm. I think her post was reasonable, even if wrong, TBH.

You were speculating about the letter (because it made you nervous and you had to conjecture the correct meaning), and she could reasonably have thought you imagined the surgeon had written it, could she not (I'm not trawling through your posts so if that's part's incorrect, excuse me)?

Can I say? I don't think you mean 'surgeons and doctors generically'? I know you can think of them as a genre, but it's odd English. You mean 'surgeons and doctors in general'.

I'm oddly bugged by this because I admit, I still don't follow the earlier distinction and because I'm writing about genre in my real life, so it is my issue.

kim147 · 04/06/2014 20:10

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CorusKate · 04/06/2014 20:20

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kim147 · 04/06/2014 20:22

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CorusKate · 04/06/2014 20:39

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ChelsyHandy · 04/06/2014 20:50

LRD I'm using the "generic" word a lot because I use it a lot in my line of work, or its Latin equivalent, to refer to a class of similar things or things with similar characteristics.

I don't think its a particularly objectionable word. Or at least not any more so than over-use of "general".

I'd be interested to hear the mathematical use though!

LRDtheFeministDragon · 04/06/2014 21:28

Er. Apparently, in maths, you have things called 'generic points'. There is a discipline called graph theory, and they use them there. That is the limit of my knowledge! Grin DB and SIL are mathematicians. I do not understand their work, but they have a cute baby I can go to see while they go to conferences.

I suspect I am objecting to 'generic' because I use it to refer to 'genre' - eg., 'this is a generic, not a linguistic, aspect of the text'. It's just bugging me.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 04/06/2014 21:29

(They did explain it to me, btw, and it was all very interesting at the time, honestly.)

fascicle · 05/06/2014 09:57

ChelsyHandy
I interpreted your posts as others did. I used quotes from two successive posts of yours - no intention to mislead or any kind of agenda.

You expressed concerns about having a procedure at a particular hospital and indicated that spelling mistakes in a letter, from that hospital, gave you concern about whether the procedure would be carried out competently.

I, and other posters, questioned an association between spelling mistakes in a hospital letter and a surgeon's skills and the success of a procedure.

Did you think that comments by other posters, regarding surgeons and literacy/letter writing, following your mention of two spelling mistakes in a hospital letter, were random? They weren't. They related to the concerns you expressed about your letter, and how competently (or not) the procedure might be performed.

If my interpretation (and other people's) is wrong, what did you mean? How do two spelling mistakes in a letter bear a relationship to the carrying out of a procedure?

I really do think that it implies more that you have some kind of agenda, and that you are not being entirely honest.

What possible agenda might I have, and how am I not being honest? I was merely questioning something that made no sense to me.

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