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Is it just me
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed the high level of incompetence shown, (especially where the young guys are concerned), in the arena of grammer? Dare I say spelling, but I am a lousy speller as well. Sister Virginia would kick my ass if she thought I was killing the English language the way these people do. As would most of the other teachers I've had, not to mention my mother! How does a person make it through life without the ability to communicate? I fear we as a society will be overrun by a culture of profesional communicators that can only say correctly, "Would you like to supersize that sir'? Am I just an idiot for noticing this or should I be happy that my son will grow up with the ability to speak and write? Or is that speek and rite?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mary Ellen Shea on
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maybe someone can come up with a translation software program. They have Babelfish to interpret foreign languages to English and vice-versa...
How about "Trailer Park Translator"?
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Permalink Reply by Greenman on
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LoL...It's be funny if it weren't so sad.
It's rather depressing how many firefighters on here seem to be funtionally illiterate.
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Permalink Reply by O'Kitty on
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Siren covered some of the same points I was going to cover. You will not have a hose line or pike pole in your hands if you do not have the funding to purchase these items. Usually for a smaller volunteer department that funding is going to come from grants or money generated from donation letters, etc. Proper use of the English language is going to produce more successful fund raising. (Even if it's just someone standing roadside holding a sign that says "Car Worsh Hare") < HEY! I didn't even realize these text boxes flagged misspellings! lol
Like most other jobs, paperwork is everywhere! I am finding more and more the fire service has not escaped paperwork. (Gosh I hate paperwork!!!) If you hold office or rank you have reports and other paperwork to do. If you have an incident or injury you have incident reports to do and possibly worker's compensation claims to file.
We should all be proud of our departments and want to present the best image to our communities. Don't underestimate the damper poor use of language can put on that image.
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Permalink Reply by Jim Seargent on
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Bablefish!!! I think you and I should just get married. I've not read "The Hitchhikers Guide" in quite a while, but after that I think I'll read it again. We know way too much of the same stuff. Just imagine the hours of inane conversation we could enjoy!
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Dear Jim,
A.) whereinhell have YOU been?
B.) As much as I agree with you regarding the mutually simpatico aspect; I would rather cheerfully chew on a mouthful of broken razor blades than get married again. In fact, the ONLY way I'm marching up the aisle again is at gunpoint.
:) Nothing personal.
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I have a gun.
I've been killer occupied. The job I'm doing is running full tilt in spite of the weather, so it's go time. I hope you all have been well. I did 13 years in my marriage before I got smart and called it quits, so I can understand. I have an idea!!!! (no, it's not the first time) We could just live together and tell stories all the time. Hey, it beats getting shit to death by grasshoppers.
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Permalink Reply by Mike W. on
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I just downloaded internet shorthand and acronyms from a website so that I could understand what FIREFIGHTERS are trying to say in this discussion. I'm with you Jim, only in my case it was Sister Mary Catherine. I spend half of my day proof-reading ambulance and fire reports. I always smile when the writer has no idea what he has just written.
I don't know if it is the schools, lack of schooling, too much pop, too little milk, my mother didn't love me, she hugged me too hard, computers, lack of computers, or whatever else. It is annoying and unprofessional. We often complain when foreigners don't speak English. I don't even know what English is anymore.
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Saints preserve us......what would Sister Virginia think?
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Permalink Reply by Clark Hummel on
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Well I have noticed. However even though I am fairly careful to spellcheck. I still double strike keys on the laptop and dont notice. Just have to lern to cipher the spalling
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Permalink Reply by ILDisasterEMT on
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My problem more often than not is an old dinosaur of a laptop that can't keep up with the speed at which I type and so I end up using the same word twice in a row or making spelling mistakes because of it. When I was doing SAR-EMS in the Southwest, one of the things I had to do as a supervisor was to proof read after action reports.Now I know they taught us all in EMT school that when writing a report, you indicate a mistake by crossing through it with a single line, initialing it and then writing what you meant to say. I swear, down there in the desert, I spent more time getting responders and search team members to re-write their reports and trying to figure out what the hell they were saying than I ever did actually searching for lost souls.
Yes. I think a lot of it has to do with the age of the informality of the internet and text messaging, but perhaps we should take a page from ICS and start using plain language. We have a lot of people on this site in various stages of rookie-ness (including myself. fire school starts on 2/9) that really want to be able to read what some of the veterans have to say so that they can learn. Face it, you can get so much more from 12,000 members here in various stages of fire service than you will ever get in a class room. Let's make a concerted effort to communicate more clearly, eliminate the internet slang and shorthand and communicate clearly. It's especially hard to take when folks post after a LODD notice and don't take the time to make sure that there writing is respectfully clear.
One of the things I catch myself doing but that bothers me none the less (and I have a BA degree in English) is writers that don't take the time to make sure they are properly using words like its/it's, here/hear, their/there/they're among countless others. At least in my part of the country, many members of the public see firefighters (by the way, the Oxford English Dictionary says that firefighter and fire fighter are both correct) as heroes, but a lot of them also see us as rather brutish heroes who couldn't find a coherent sentence with both hands and a flashlight. Its especially embarrassing when a chief or inspector gets on the evening news and stumbles to make sense. I'm glad that someone actually started this thread because I had been noticing the trend of poor written expression since joining this forum. That being said, this is still the best emergency services site on the internet, so keep up the good work. Just spell it better.
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You touched on a particularly salient point; the public voice of the fire service.
It seems that every time I see a news report about a local emergency involving the fire department, I watch (wincing)as the "Department Spokesperson" butchers what could otherwise have been an opportunity to educate the public not only about fire safety, but about the fire department.
There was a rather painful demonstration on television the other night---pretty big fire, several families displaced, adjacent structures were threatened....the responding departments did a terrific job of knocking down the fire and saved nearby buildings from any significant damage.
Then Johnny Firefighter talks to the reporter....
"Uh....yeah......it, um.....was a pretty big fire....um.......so.....yeah." And that was about as enlightening as it got.
FASNY is offering 4 Public Information Officer training programs across NYS this spring to address this problem--we need the fire service, in particular the line officers and department spokespeople to be able to speak concisely and intelligently on camera and in print.
Check out the FASNY group for more info
http://www.firefighternation.com/group/fasnymembers
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Permalink Reply by Allen Wahlstrom on
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wow...que the Alannis Morrisette "You Oughta Know" (or insert any angry song of her's)
said in the most tongue in cheek of ways...
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