Posted by BeardedLady on December 31, 2002, at 13:34:49
In reply to Re: Seventh grade?!!! » Dinah, posted by IsoM on December 30, 2002, at 13:00:25
> 2. As Beardy knows, passive verbs don't carry the same force in a resumé, but are well suited for communicating in a polite manner with others.
Passives are sometimes better, as they take the blame off one and put it on another. "Ten points will be deducted for lateness" sounds like they simply come off, so it's not my fault. But my students would be upset if I said, "I will deduct ten points for lateness."
> 3. To judge whether punctuation is correct, the program must follow pre-determined examples. There's too many times...
Contractions often bring the points down, and it's easy to make an error in subject/verb agreement when you use them. That sentence should have said, "There ARE too many times."
>...that these programs will tell you that "...it’s fragrance is..." should be changed to "...its fragrance is..."!
"It's" is a contraction for "it is." You don't mean "It is fragrance is," do you? Hence, "its fragrance is" is correct, and the program was right.
> 4. Spell-checkers are good. When I'm working on a document that I wish to save or that's important, it's often caught my words with juxtapositioned letters (e.g. ohme instead of home). But spell-checkers often assume an unknown name is incorrectly spelled, marks acronyms, foreign expressions, & slang as incorrect most times, so it's hardly foolproof itself.
Yes, my students wrote about the National Riffle Association, and spell check couldn't help a bit. Instead of that silly readability thingie, we should have a spell checker on here, like we do on Outlook.
> So in all seriousness, Dinah, don't bother using the readability calculator. I easily understand your posts. I'm sure others do too.Yeah, why fret about another thing? What I don't get is why a psychiatrist would add this to a site intended to support a group of people already suffering from social phobia, anxiety, depression, and self-esteem issues.
Dr. Bob, did you think this through before jumping on the technology? Did you ask yourself whether this was necessary or whether it would make people uncomfortable to learn that, according to some machine, they write on a third grade level (even though there's nothing at all wrong with that)?
It seems to me there are some things we can do without. It's important to consider context. Were this some sort of writing improvement bulletin board, there might have been a place for the readability ratings.
beardy
poster:BeardedLady
thread:8675
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20021128/msgs/8700.html