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I’m a software developer with a bunch of industry experience. I’m also a comp sci professor, and whenever a CS alum working in industry comes to talk to the students, I always like to ask, “What do you wish you’d taken more of in college?”
Almost without exception, they answer, “Writing.”
One of them said, “I do more writing at Google now than I did when I was in college.”
I am therefore begging, begging you to listen to @stephstephking: https://mstdn.social/@stephstephking/113336270193370876
Matthias Wiesmann @inthehands @stephstephking one misunderstanding I see is that in large coloration, you write a lot, but in corporate globish, not English. I’m not sure if English department are ready to teach that…
@thias @stephstephking
Counterpoint: corporate globbish exists to obscure the fact that people can’t write or think clearly; clear writing and clear thinking can cut through it like a hot knife through butter. And English depts most certainly •are• ready to teach that!
Not always true, to be sure, but I really have seen this happen in industry: corporate babblers flocking to a well-expressed idea like moths to a light.
@inthehands @stephstephking ignore the corporate aspect if you will, most people reading and writing globish are not native an don’t have the cultural bagage to understand any metaphor or any reference - and they don’t need to - so this has to go, same goes with vocabulary richness, pick one term and stick with it. The language needs to be as pretty as bulldozer, ie not at all.
Just admitting the language is not English but another related language is the first step.
@thias @stephstephking
Ah, I misread/misunderstood “globish” on the first pass: I took you to mean corporate gobbledeygook / business-speak, but I think you’re talking about English as a global lingua franca…?
That now understood, you may misunderstand what English depts teach. It’s not primarily grammar, and “pretty” isn’t the central idea at all. It has to do with clarity: not just of expression, but of •seeing•. Having a point matters in any language.