Short Conversation.
HER: Tell me, with this intelligence thing, does it piss you off or irritate you if I write a grammatically incorrect e-mail? Does it disappoint you that I can’t always spell things correctly and that I start sentences with ‘And’ and ‘But’ when I know you are not supposed to? What about getting apostrophes in the wrong place? Or do you forgive Billy and I for not knowing as much as you about these things? I can identify with all of the questions you asked yourself at the end of the document but for now I have just one: do people like you being this way and do you think it enhances your appeal to people in any way by being able to talk intelligently and articulately about any subject? In other words, do people actually care? I don’t mind you feeling superior to me. I don’t mind you knowing more than me and I don’t feel intimidated by it. I had to ask myself the question why. It is because it is not important to me, it is not something that I ever judge other people on and it will never be an issue to me.
ME: That’s a bloody good question. Do people actually care? For example: it should read “Billy and me”, not Billy and I. You use the same person as you would if you were speaking of yourself, but out of politeness, you put the third party first.
HER: thankyou for the lesson but I already knew that.
ME: The way I see the answer to your other question about “caring” is this: When someone tells me something which is either correct or is a process which makes sense, I remember it and (usually) understand it immediately. If it is correct or better than the process I am using, I then try to implement it. I then cannot understand why someone else cannot understand it. Do you see? So, when I see someone type something incorrectly and then they say “thanks for the lesson, but I knew it” I wonder why, if they knew it, would they write it incorrectly? Laziness? Or is it that they don’t care?
HER: Because it just isn’t important to some people and you only succeed in alienating yourself when you insist on pointing these things out. Your priorities are obviously different. End of story. Now get off your soapbox.
ME: I was afraid your response would be the above. I am not on my soapbox. I understand some of my opinions may alienate me, or quite simply, make me seem like a patronising, opinionated, arrogant bastard, but it is not something I care about. Offending someone who will have no bearing on my life is not something I consider to be a problem. If I am taken the wrong way, I usually judge what I have to say before I say it, so you can pretty much assume I am either saying it to be a bastard or I am not interested in the other person’s opinion of me. Or, I am saying it to provoke a response in someone I care about.
Basically, I am a very uncomplicated person (with a complicated philosophical thought process) who believes things should be done correctly. This means that if you speak English, speak English properly. If you are writing English, write it correctly. If you are doing your job, do it correctly. What is the difference?