Monday, August 13, 2007

English - the lost language

I spent the last working hours of last week lamenting over a technical document written by the "consultant firm" engaged to relieve us engineers of the chore.

I was rather amazed by the text and lack of attention that the writer had: after all, how much effort would it take to attempt to rephrase a sentence? In addition, while the informal "you" can be rather charming in a personal letter, it is out of place in a technical document - even if it is a user guide.

To add to my list of gripes, I'm supposed to be an ape-like engineer whose main strength is engineering (and creating buggy software). Grammatic-wise, "urgh, OG OG OG! " is supposed to be as far as it gets for my type. If I can spot some strange things in the document, isn't it about time for it to be revised?

its obvious that that the writer is not going to be a patron saint of the english language (nor for quality work).

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