topic Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller in Community Spirit

Professor Julius Sumner Miller

davidc4430 — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 23:53:36 GMT

Professor Julius Sumner Miller maintains his faith in physics despite Why Is It So? near-miss

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-19/julius-sumner-millers-faith-in-physics-why-is-it-so-1964/10562696

i fondly remember watching this crazy old guy on telly as a boy, they just dont make em like him anymore and they sure dont put em on tv in their own show!

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

kopenhagen5 — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 00:10:49 GMT

Miller was intolerant of misspelled words and misplaced punctuation, and often angered his colleagues because he charged that the students of most faculty were not learning enough. During an interview in the 1940s, he stated that intellectual life in America was in trouble, a belief he held for the rest of his life.

We are approaching a darkness in the land. Boys and girls are emerging from every level of school with certificates and degrees, but they can't read, write or calculate. We don't have academic honesty or intellectual rigor. Schools have abandoned integrity and rigor.

A bit like what has been going on here in Australia.

He passed away in 1987 aged 77.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

davidc4430 — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 00:16:58 GMT

i think he would be apalled by my spelling.

as he would by todays 'reliance on technology'

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

zanadoo_56 — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 05:08:26 GMT

@davidc4430 wrote:
i think he would be apalled by my spelling.
as he would by todays 'reliance on technology'

Bad spelling is endemic in society these days. I've given up....mind you, now that my laptop is getting on in years (by computer standards) and the keys are beginning to stick or sometimes barely work at all, technology may be responsible in more ways then one, rather than human error. It certainly is an issue in my case. 🙂

Sometimes I also wonder if it would be easier to ban the apostrophe completely than expect it to be used correctly....after which I would ban the (American) word 'gotten'. 😉

But then again, there are common words misused that do make me smile - phased instead of fazed is one of my favourites.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

davidc4430 — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 06:01:35 GMT

i dont completely disagree about bad spelling for anyone who is a product of a full education, but those of us who didnt finish high school for whatever reason usually dont misspell on purpose or laziness. i do my best. i hope i get it right most of the time.

unless i know a person has had a full education i hope i dont feel the need to point out their spelling flaws.

as long as i can decifer what they mean i'm fine.

what really gets under my skin are the ones in pointing out someones bad spelling make obvious mistakes.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

Anonymous — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 06:20:22 GMT

I know exactly what you mean

I taught myself to read and write and had almost no formal education until I set foot in a classroom to do my HSC in the 90's

Another forum I was on years back had a member who took great delight in pouncing on all my spelling errors (and another girl for whom English was her second language)

Funnily enough,this same woman would at times post while drunk to the eyeballs and her posts would be full of spelling mistakes......but that was ok

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

imastawka — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 06:39:20 GMT

Good on ya Bear.

David, I left school with only year 8 under my belt.

But I've always been an avid reader.

I think that helps. You absorb all the spelling/grammar.

It also helped that my mum was a primary school teacher,

and so I got a lot of these

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

zanadoo_56 — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 06:57:37 GMT

I didn't finish high school (I quit near the end of 5th form (year 11) to go to TAFE) but English was my best subject. BTW this is balanced by not being so hot at Maths. 🙂

I was actually thinking of a family member who did finish 6th form.....but for whom near enough was always good enough when it came to spelling. I had a message from him recently where 'you're' was used instead of 'your'....sigh. He loves new technology and SMS and all that stuff because (and I quote) 'No one cares anymore about spelling, it's the changing face of English.' blah blah blah. In other words he doesn't have to bother worry about accurate spelling....not that he ever really did. 😉

My pet hate is not where individuals make mistakes but when the mistakes are probably subject to review....and are not corrected. I'm talking about what's said on TV (like gotten), in the newspapers and especially in signage and even catalogues. It makes me wonder: if someone in say a signage company sees a mistake, so, do they approach the client to suggest correcting it...or just do it exactly as it came to them? Or maybe they too think it no longer matters.

My working years were spent where clear and concise English was essential. It became a major yet unofficial part of my job to make corrections. I guess it kept me on my toes. These days the sticky laptop keys are so annoying I've (shock horror) let mistakes remain uncorrected more than a few times. 🙂 I'll bet that Professor Julius Sumner Miller would not be impressed.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

performance_parts_clearance_centre — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:48:33 GMT

My response to the "No one cares anymore about spelling" argument is to politely ask if they'd be OK with the nurse giving their child an injection not being able to spell the name of the drug correctly, and grabbing the one that has a similar name but potentially fatal consequences if injected...

The only ones who use the "spelling / grammar / punctuation doesn't matter" argument are those who are no damned good at them...

So far as the media goes, as someone who works in radio (albeit community radio) I find the level of mis-spelling in the media just plain offensive.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

kopenhagen5 — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 03:43:48 GMT

I am also amazed at the number of media personnel using grammar incorrectly on a daily basis.

Pure lazyness if you ask me.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

imastawka — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 04:08:22 GMT

Laziness - but I forgives ya, cos you're a Great Dane.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

davidc4430 — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 05:43:13 GMT

@imastawka wrote:

Laziness - but I forgives ya, cos you're a Great Dane.

lucky you didnt say 'grate drain'

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

kopenhagen5 — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 05:55:11 GMT

Hahaha...............what a time for a faux pas.

Wait a minute............are you saying Danes can't spell ?

I think I know how it happened as I initially wrote.... purely being lazy.

I often think of a sentence and change it but forget to change the initial context or spelling especially when I rush.

P.S. Thanks for the correction.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

springyzone — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 09:04:36 GMT

@davidc4430 wrote:
i dont completely disagree about bad spelling for anyone who is a product of a full education, but those of us who didnt finish high school for whatever reason usually dont misspell on purpose or laziness. i do my best. i hope i get it right most of the time.

unless i know a person has had a full education i hope i dont feel the need to point out their spelling flaws.
as long as i can decifer what they mean i'm fine.

what really gets under my skin are the ones in pointing out someones bad spelling make obvious mistakes.

I think what people need to keep in mind is that not everyone knows how to type or has expert keyboard skills.

When I write by hand, I punctuate correctly. When typing though, I often miss the capitals.

We're all human.

I used to teach and for the last 6 years of my career was in Literacy Support, so I do value correct grammar & punctuation.

But I think a lot of people forget context. Messageboards are a social outlet. They are for discussion & sharing ideas. They are a form of fairly informal writing. The main aim with writing is to get a message across & if people are doing that, then I think it can be rude if others pick them up over the odd word here or there. It's belittling.

If people genuinely cannot understand a message though, that can be a different thing & no harm in asking what word they meant.

I think of it in these terms-if you write a shopping list or send a quick text to a friend or dash off a quick message on a message board, you try to do your best but the odd mistake here or there should be forgiven.

But if you're writing out a job application or an essay that is being submitted for publishing, proof read, proof read and proof read again.

I was devastaed last year. I wrote out a family history book, the story of my dad's life and times. Added photos and information. 230 pages.

Proof read several times, often changing things as I went. Couldn't find a spell checker. Sent it off for printing & when it came back, I found one error. On the back cover of all places. I had written Toyko instead of Tokyo. I'm still upset that the mistake had to be so visible!!

So to me, spelling is important but context more so. Don't sweat the small stuff & messageboards are small stuff.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

imastawka — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 10:07:16 GMT

@kopenhagen5 wrote:
Hahaha...............what a time for a faux pas.

Wait a minute............are you saying Danes can't spell ?

Hahahahaha Not at all. But being a Dane raised in Japan, and now speaking English,

I figure we can cut you a lot of slack.

That's a lot of languages.

Did I get it all right?

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

davidc4430 — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 11:38:28 GMT

ive been told once or twice i speak efluent gibberish

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

kopenhagen5 — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 11:47:56 GMT

Yep, got it in one stawks.

david, I'm glad you are fluent in it.

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

davidc4430 — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 23:15:58 GMT

Oh or zero? When the evolution of language clashes with linguistic purism

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-23/zero-nought-oh-what-is-the-correct-way-to-say-the-number-0/10731956

Re: Professor Julius Sumner Miller

zanadoo_56 — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:42:14 GMT

The book typo must have been a right pain but it happens. When I used to write short stories I'd go over and over them looking for any errors and then send them on confident that were all correct. The person who received them however always had someone else check them again...and while some of the 'mistakes' queried were the differences between Oz English, British English and American English, there were also actual mistakes as well. Sigh.

Recently I have been re-reading old fiction books I haven't looked at for years, with a view that I'll keep it if it's still a good book or chuck it out (charity or recycling) if I am bored with it. The thing is, I have been surprised at the amount of mistakes in books by well known authors using well known publishers - spelling, bad grammar and (I can only assume) whole lines missing.