Language, not the programming variety, is very important in any professional endeavor. If you do not have the ability to speak your native language properly, some of the people with whom you interact will not take you seriously. They may make mental notes questioning your intelligence in addition to your professionalism. It’s a fact of life.
You will also be judged on your command of a language when you post online in a public forum, such as a blog, a discussion forum, a news group, an online game, or an IRC channel. In the MMOGs I play, I refuse to group with anyone who can’t bother to type proper English (”u wnt grp? we nd more 4 raid”) as we tend to have little in common. I understand that non-native English speakers can’t be expected to speak English properly and we should overlook it (although, as I have seen in the GDNet forums, some people aren’t willing to). My experience teaching English in Korea has taught me that non-native speakers usually have a better command of English than many native speakers.
There’s a difference between making typos and abusing the language. Usually, that difference is obvious, particularly when the same mistake is demonstrated multiple times in the same post:
The cat and teh dog went to the store.
Teh cat and teh dog went to teh store.
In the above examples, the first sentence contains a typo. The second sentence is an example of someone being an idiot. I don’t know anyone who always misspells ‘the’ unless they do it intentionally. In my book, people who misspell words intentionally are people I have no desire to interact with on any level. I don’t care how nice of a person you are, if you think ‘teh’ is cute, cool, or whatever other adjective you want to apply, then you and I come from two different spheres.
I frequently make typos. I’m certainly not the world’s best typist. I regularly misspell words. Some words still trip me up after 12 years of teaching, particularly those with occurrences of double letters (occurrence, recommend and necessary get me every time). I often make grammatical errors in my writings. I’ve always been bad about the liberal use of commas, for example. I try to catch all of my mistakes, but sometimes I fail. When I don’t catch them all there is the chance that someone will read what I wrote and have an unfavorable impression of me because of one of those mistakes. Even so, I don’t go out of my way to edit forum or newsgroup posts. I do spend a little extra time on blog posts, but not much. So because I don’t hold myself to a high standard in such forums, I’m very cautious about judging others when reading their posts. Still, there is a point even in casual environments where I just want to pull my hair out after reading what some people have written.
Over the years I have identified a plethora of common errors native English speakers make when typing and speaking. Some of them are so blatantly wrong it makes me question the quality of modern education systems. Such mistakes make it difficult for non-native speakers to fully understand what they are reading, even if they have a strong command of English. I’m not talking about slang, but about common spelling and usage errors.
Since indie game developers often write their own copy (web site pages, documentation, sometimes even press announcements), I have decided to start posting a series of tips which point out and correct some of the common mistakes native speakers make. This should also be beneficial to non-native speakers. My sources of inspiration come from the online game development communities I frequently visit. I will begin posting them in a day or two, though I don’t know how often. Hopefully, someone will find them helpful.
Technorati Tags: English, game business, proofreading, editing
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