Spelling and Grammar AS Defense

[CajunCenturion]

Unemployment and Identity Theft are both fairly large problems today. It should then come as no surprise that on-line job boards are being used as a vehicle to obtain identity details.
Online job listing an ID theft scam
An interesting point, and the only point pertinent to the focus of this forum, is the last paragraph.

Like many online scams, bad spelling, grammar mistakes, and awkward sentence structures are often a tip that something is amiss.

The flip side also bears consideration. If, in your correspondence, you misspell words, or use bad grammar, you may find it difficult to be taken seriously. That being said, is that quoted sentence grammatically correct?

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[GwydionM]

Maybe you've misunderstood. The same spelling error in two supposedly independent texts hints at cut-and-paste work. So does errors in grammer.

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An old man who lives in the UK

 

[GwydionM]

I beleive encyclopaedias deliberately add a few imaginary people and places, so that if someone takes the data and reworks it, the evidence is there that it was theft.

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An old man who lives in the UK

 

[GwydionM]

Something similar happened with the Hitler diaries. One entry had Hitler being congratulated by some senior general on 50 years of military service (rather than the other way round and it was absurd because Hitler would have needed to have begun his military service before birth to notch up such a total). The source was soon found, a list of Nazi-related trivia that had just the same errir.

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An old man who lives in the UK

 

[johnwm]

Quote should maybe read

Like many online scams, bad spelling, grammatical mistakes and awkward sentence structures are often tips that something is amiss.

Note the excess comma (after 'mistakes') has been removed

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[chipperMDW]

Nothing's wrong with the "excess" comma.


The more important problem can be seen when you reword the sentence:

Bad spelling, grammar mistakes, and awkward sentence structures -- like many online scams -- are often tips that something is amiss.

So... bad spelling, grammar mistakes, and awkward sentence structures are online scams.

I'm sure the point is that this sentence has an awkward (or, rather, just incorrect) structure itself.

 

[AnotherHiggins]

Oh no, not the Oxford Comma debate again!

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[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]

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[craigsboyd]

So, the alert regarding online scams is really an online scam? I'm unplugging my computers from the internet. It is just too dangerous to be out here.

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[tsdragon]

JohnM had the correct notion about the problem with the original quote: the verb should have been plural. So should the verb in GwydionM's response "So [red]do[/red] errors in grammer".

To the original point of the thread: I've gotten email that were purportedly from my bank, Yahoo, or other places, that wanted me to "verify my account information" (which included my credit card number and PIN in most cases). Usually the extremely poor grammar and spelling in those emails or on their web sites make it instantly obvious that they are phony. I've also heard "experts" on TV programs say that bad spelling and grammar are usually a tip-off that the site is phony.

So, yes, if you use bad grammar and spelling in your own correspondence you might also find it hard to be taken seriously.


Tracy Dryden

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For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.