Comments on: “I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar”

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 06:59:42 +0000

Who would want to work for this ass anyway? So crippled by his rules of grammar and pointing out his self proclaimed inability to process content or comprehend his own limitation to create anything other than rout learning. he must really hate Twain’s veneculars in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer? Yes grammar is important but people who can’t bring anything to the table but an ability to spell and perfect grammar aren’t usually creative thinkers and problem solvers. What you do at the table is what makes you a collaborator. This man would bar any creative thinker from the table but ones he deems perfect. Content is what keeps you interested and a computer can spell check and edit grammar, but can a computer create a plot and tell a story. Exclusion of the differently abled and a bully picking on people who’s brains are different than his is what this guy represents.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 06:57:19 +0000

Who would want to work for this ass anyway? So crippled by his rules of grammar and pointing out his self proclaimed inability to process content or comprehend his own limitation to create anything other than rout learning. he must really hate Twain’s veneculars in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer? Yes grammar is important but people who can’t bring anything to the table but an ability to spell and perfect grammar aren’t usually creative thinkers and problem solvers. What you do at the table is what makes you a collaborator. This man would bar any creative thinker from the table but ones he deems perfect. Content is what keeps you interested and a computer can spell check and edit grammar, but can a computer create a plot and tell a story. Exclusion of the differently abled and bully picking on people who’s brains are different his is what this guy represents.

By: Harold

Harold — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 16:19:05 +0000

This shows that the feather brained flim-flam men of Harvard B school don’t have a clue and could care less, about what constitutes grammar. They are too busy figuring out how to manipulate the LIBOR rates, destroy the unions, and evade taxes.

By: James O'Keeffe

James O'Keeffe — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:10:47 +0000

Split infinitives are bad style but not necessarily incorrect grammar. There are differences as well as overlaps between style and correctness. And I go with “Wiens’s.”

By: Harold

Harold — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:20:53 +0000

Ranting aside, this perfectly illustrates the emptiness of business education unmoored from a strong foundation in the liberal arts (“arts” means skills, BTW). The writers, readers, fans and editors of the Harvard Business Review are hopelessly confused about of the concept of “grammar”, believing it to be simply synonymous with spelling.

By: Harold

Harold — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:02:49 +0000

From the folks who gave us Enron and other horrors — Harvard Business School is a bad joke.

By: Harold

Harold — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 04:45:48 +0000

Geoffrey K Pullum writes in Language Log: “As I write these words, the number of comments posted below Kyle Wiens’s strangely contentless piece in Harvard Business Review, ‘I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why’, is just coasting up toward 1200 (yes, one thousand two hundred; that’s not a typo). This cannot be out of any enthusiasm for grammar: the number of grammar issues mentioned in the piece is zero. Wiens says or implies that he wants employees who know the difference between apostrophes and apostles; between semicolons and colons; between to and too; between its and it’s; and between their, there, and they’re. But this isn’t about grammar; these are just elementary vocabulary and spelling distinctions. How could it possibly be of interest to Harvard Business Review readers that the CEO of a technical documentation company expects his employees to be able to spell different words differently? I like literacy too, but why this fiddling with spelling shibboleths while the economy burns?” http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4093

By: Carl Rosin

Carl Rosin — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:06:05 +0000

DC Parent (#7): You’re right: grammar is not rigorously attended to after middle school — but it really should be taught rigorously in 6th-8th if that’s not happening already. My sense is that high school’s enhanced focus on fluency, organization, and argumentation makes that appropriate. We had better not ignore grammar in high school, but we can’t focus on everything every year. What I want to see in my district’s curriculum: know what has been taught in the past, and leverage (instead of re-teaching) whenever possible.

Anonymous (#8): I agree that “Wiens’s” should be used; my point was only that (as suggested by these two valuable modern resources: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp and http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/01/) adding the ‘s is not required, my favorite grammarians’ “rule number 1″ notwithstanding.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:23:50 +0000

Practice doesn’t make perfect – perfect practice makes perfect. Just ask any athletic coach.

If teachers don’t correct grammar mistakes, then students won’t practice using correct grammar. (And, yes, parents and other adults in authority should correct improper speaking and writing as well.)

Robert and Carl, Strunk and White’s (The Elements of Style) rule number 1 for usage is “Form the possessive singular of nouns with ‘s”, so I would go with “Weins’s”.

By: DC Parent

DC Parent — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 01:36:19 +0000

Challenge I see is that writing is rarely taught with a focus on grammar at least in my neck of the woods. It just seems to be slipped in. I personally can’t remember it ever being taught outside one 8th grade class. I get a feeling that most teachers go along the lines that it is not tested so therefore not a focus in the classroom. Does the common core provide renewed emphasis on knowing grammatical structure?