Spelling and Grammar

[klinux]

Man, this article is an editorial disaster.

The article first establishes a scenario (an apocalypse, no less) which is downgraded an event that will "quite likely" get delayed. Way to convey that sense of apocalypse!

They are correct: It will.

No capitalization needed after a colon unless it is a illustrative quotation.

Platform Transitions always leave wreckage in their wake

No capital T needed on the word transitions.

And platform transitions does not always leave wreckage: cassette to CD went over fine, VHS to DVD was a quick change, CPU sockets change virtually anually, Apple went with Intel, etc. The list goes on. If you are going to make such a broad sweeping statement, at least define what you mean by wreckage.

Indeed.. dictate

Is there really a need for a 100 word sentence?

Also, semi-colons are used to separate indenpendent clauses. You made this punctuation error numerous times in the article ("the annoyance of seeing", "enough that there are", "mostly in tones").


The next five years are not going to be kind to movie theater operators, local TV stations, Hollywood studios, DVD renters or established consumer electronics manufacturers.

First, you have pretty much excluded everyone except for non-DVD renters. Second, making prediction five years out is just lame. Name a few predictions that you and I have made in 2001 that is true today?

Do not use "..." to end a setence like "margins won’t last much longer if the price-dropping continues much longer… "

I hope your next article is better than this.

[Jason Dunn]

klinux, it's one thing to disagree with Felix's ideas, but it comes across as rather petty to critique his writing/grammar. Surely you have better things to do with your time than that? ;-)

[klinux]

Hey, Jason, you overestimate my time to procrastinate! I would otherwise not have any time to enjoy your fine sites! :)

In my defense, I would have to argue that one has very little time to make a good impression. I may have the best product or idea but if I cannot sell it because I cannot present it - it might as well be useless.

In addition, if it was a case of isolated mistakes, there is no reason to dwell on it as we all make mistakes. Sadly, the mistakes were in every other sentence and simply too frequent to be ignored. In fact, upon rereading the article, I picked up more errors. This article is not a mere post - it is a front page article representing Felix and DMT!

Now, I would agree with you that a critique of Felix's content may be more sound. Nevertheless, there is really not much content there to critique.

Felix suggests that transition to HDTV will compeletely change the "rules of the game." I waited eagerly to find out how he will support this argument. I waited. And waited. The result is one single rule followed by two tacked on throw-away gems like "assume nothing".

To me, there is no excuse for a writer to not proofread. One can defend one's ideas but how does one defend gramamtical and spelling mistakes?

[Jason Dunn]

Felix suggests that transition to HDTV will compeletely change the "rules of the game." I waited eagerly to find out how he will support this argument. I waited. And waited. The result is one single rule followed by two tacked on throw-away gems like "assume nothing".

Well, this is the first of a many-part series, so perhaps in future articles you can focus on the content and not his typos? It's like two politicians at a debate and instead of talking about the issues at hand one criticises the others tie or shoes - focus on the issue and people will take you seriously, focus on petty things and people will not. I certainly don't have perfect spelling or grammar, even when I do take the time to spell check, and if you responded to every one of my posts with criticism of my errors it would get really old, really quick. You're letting your personal feelings about Felix get in the way of your better judgment about what's really worth commenting on.

See? I didn't even comment on the fact that you misspelled the word "compeletely". :lol:

[klinux]

I do have different standards and I suspect everyone does as well.

One has little expectations in posts, e-mail, IM, conversations, etc. In those forms, everything goes, such as "IMHO" and "ttyl." That expecation is raised when the content is a full length article! When I do an internal presentation within my group, I know there is a level of expectaiton that differs when I am presenting to an external customer. The expectations are context sensitive!

Let's elevate this to another level. You are New York Times. I am a lowly reader, not even a subscriber. I noticed spelling errors in an article. I write to you to correct them. In my letter, I misspelled a dozen words. My mistakes do not absolve the author, who is held to a higher standard, from his mistakes.

And let's be realistic here. You know form and function go together. A politician will not be let into a debate if he decided not to wear pants. My idea will not sell if I present in a thong. You can scream "focus on the issue and don't focus on the petty issues" such as my thong until the cows come home but you know you need both form and function.

With that said, the mistakes in the original article are not minor nor occasional. Rather, they are obvious and frequent. I do not understand why you think they are so defensible?

Lastly, you said that I am letting my personal feelings get in the way of what's really worth commenting on. As I have said before, the article is lacking content to critique. I am interested to hear which part of his article you think is particularly insightful and should be focused on.



I see that I, for one, am not adding value to this discussion as it relates to the article. While I am still interested to hear what everyone else has to say, however, but I will bow out of this thread for now.

[Jason Dunn]

<groan> This is so ridiculous. All I'll say is that Felix's next articles will be going through our copyeditor, and that it was my fault that this one did not before it was published.