Some People…
…just don’t know grammar.
I recently received an email from an academic advisor at Clemson. While she meant to send the email out to a colleague about a listserv, she sent it to all of the people on the listserv.
While a normal person would realize that this email was a mistake, several people hit “Reply All” and unnecessarily sent a message questioning the email to everyone on the listserv.
One of my favorite responses was:
sorry, I dont understand what this is?
I’m not sure if the proper use of capitalization, apostrophes, and question marks is taught in Clemson, but I’m pretty sure that [name redacted for preservation of image] needs to take that class and not Drinking and Slutting 101. (I’m not quite sure if that’s a graduate class or not)
It’s assumed, i believe, that a working understanding of written English grammar is a prerequisite for admission into education at the university level. It is a widely held misconception that all communication expressed via the Internet should be written as if spoken.
That said, it is interesting to note that one of your requirements for a normal person is that they have a strong enough connection to the email system that they would easily detect that the email had been sent to a listserv and where the mistake had been made and that their private (much less public) imput was neither necessary or desirable.
It is maybe worth pointing out that as of 2009 it was estimated that 1.733 billion people are internet users worldwide, only just over 25% of the global population. Even in America, over 1 in 4 people do not use the Internet. Of this remaining 75%, how many do you think have an email account that ever comes into contact with a listserv (other than spam), and how many of those are users proficient enough to really feel comfortable with all the options available to them. I’d be interested on seeing the numbers on which browsers our parents’ generation is choosing to run now, and find out how many of them are engaged and informed enough to make intelligent decisions rather than desperately trying to stay afloat in a digital environment they don’t understand.
Anyway, not actually criticizing you here Paul, obviously; there probably will come a day (I hope there will) when that kind of proficiency truly is a global standard. It’s just easy, especially at college, to forget how many people (especially on a global scale) really still are “computer illiterate”.