From:	"Wow, Reality. That's a switch" <MHILLIARD@****.ALBION.EDU>
Subject:	I is a college student
Date:	Tue, 4 Oct 1994 16:14:45 -0500

A general reply to the general rebuttals:

One the acidity of my post:
>You ranted just a tad, there.
Yes, I did. As I'd said, I'd just finished a large editing job, where I
got a concentrated dose of all the things that tick me off. If I wrote
that message now, it would probably not be nearly so acerbic. However,
my feelings on the matter are unchanged.

>and that not all of your comments apply to everyone.
I know this

A few specifics:

>I don't have a spellchecker
I don't either. I do have the option of writing in edit mode, where I can
go back and make corrections, but it's a pain to use and I only bother
for really long posts.

>It's mostly newbies
Uh, actually, the two examples of time/date stamps I posted were formats
used by two list veterans. And the textual errors are almost universal.

>to this group that don't have English as their first language.
In this case of course mistakes are understandable. I'm trying to master
Welsh, and the mutation trips me up every time.
However, I doubt this accounts for more than a very small portion of the
mistakes.

> I'm usually able to let poor grammar go. (Considering all of the
>"fraggin" and "drek" that get's used in alot of posts. Is
"fraggin" a word?
>Is it a participle? Where is the g at the end of the word. I could
>understand "fragging."
That's not bad grammer, that's slang. Using the game-setting's peculiar
idioms is a good thing-it adds character and realism.
Let me add that I also don't have a problem with represting accents in
text either, for the same reason. I even had a character who had one,
until he got geeked in the AI War.
Further, I understand that typos happen-they happen to me, too. What
prompted my complaints were the sheer number of obvious mistakes and
mispellings, like mixing up "they're" and "their", and certain people
who's posts were almost one error after another. That's more than an
occasional typo.

>two spaces after a sentence
I've never heard of two spaces as standard, but I've also never taken a
typing class, nor do I know what an "MLA" is, so I could be *gasp* wrong.
If that is the case, I humbly beg your pardon.

Phelan