That damned curiosity

And now for something completely different. Nor anything remotely to do with photography. Not even tenuously. So be warned!

It sort of follows on from a recent little exchange between a photochum and I about words and phrases that we find particularly irritating. Well, I’ve just now discovered (and I’m still trying to recover from it at the moment) that these irritations may not be confined to simple words and phrases. They may even extend to sentences… or even whole paragraphs!

Now I’ll readily admit that occasionally I’ll bend the rules of grammar a tad. Insert the odd slang word here and there. Employ some commonly encountered usages that, strictly speaking, aren’t quite the ticket. And even the occasional mild swear word. Nothing in a major way you understand. Just sufficient to impart a little personality or character to this ’ere blog. And, I have to confess, in attempted emulation of the way I actually speak. In the “real world”. So that when someone’s reading the posts here it’s like we’re having a real conversation. Chatting, sort of thing.

And there’s a classic example… “sort of thing”. It’s a phrase you’ll find popping up all over the place here. Because it’s a phrase I tend to use quite a bit when actually talking to people.
Another example is the word (word?) “cos”… short for “because” of course. For, slovenly slob that I am, that’s actually how I very often say it in conversation.
You get the drift. Sort of thing.

However, despite all these little pet usages and foibles of mine, I still try to adhere to at least some standards… if only to render what I write relatively comprehensible.

After all, blogs are all about communication… aren’t they? Moreover, if it’s a public blog, then its all about communicating with all and sundry… whoever happens to pass by. And if one doesn’t stick with at least some basic rules, then what one writes becomes difficult to understand. As well as being a tad inconsiderate of those unfortunate enough to read whatever’s been written. So that’s not really communicating, is it? Or not good communication at least. May just as well write in a foreign language in fact. Or am I missing something?

It seems though that this isn’t a principal concern for some folk. And I’ve just discovered that such really blatant and extended misuses of the language are not only almost incomprehensible but also damned annoying. And bloody irritating to boot.

This discovery is entirely my own fault of course. Although in part the WordPress crew themselves are to blame. For had they not introduced that “possibly related posts” feature that appears at the end of many posts and provides an automatically generated little list of… er… possibly related posts, this would never have happened.

Y’see, in an idle moment of curiosity I was checking out (as I sometimes do) how folk have arrived here. And spot this incoming link from a site I don’t recognise. So (that damned curiosity again) I click through to see what it’s all about.

And what it’s all about is that one of my posts appears in their little automatically generated list of “possibly related posts”. Obviously one of their visitors must have clicked on it. Fair enough I guess. After all, that’s how it’s intended to work.

However, it’s at this point that I make the cardinal mistake. For I read that post. Well, I had nothing better to do at the time. And it was reasonably interesting. Nothing wrong with it at all in fact. Nothing to lead me to suspect what was loitering further down the page.

So having read the post I then, stupidly, went on to read the comments. And discovered this, that I greeted with my rarely used “three W’s”… What? Why? WTF?…

It’s so grate to heer ov a homeless kitteh dat reely needed teh help, find someone so gud dat wud gibs him alla halp dat he needed. Hao wunnerful dat u cud taek in dis gentle and lubbing sole. I can’t wait to heer how his life unfolds and intertwines wif urs. Oh, I juss SO happeh fur boff of u. A mostest wunnerful change fur boff ov ur lives!

Why? Just why? What’s wrong with people? Is it meant to be funny? Or cute? Or what? Perhaps the kindest interpretation is that the writer’s dyslexic, in which case it can of course be forgiven. Although I suspect that’s not the reason.

Addendum: And here’s a post that I’ve only just spotted, on “Freshly Pressed”, that in a curious sort of way is kind of apposite… Dot, Dot, Dot. Difference is though, it’s highly intelligible… and a damn good read. And oh, how I can relate to it!