first off, steve, I really should thank you for your input, which is much appreciated. however, I must say I did not appreciate your judgement. (notice that I did not say advice.) my retort was merely an attempt to clarify rather than done out of spite. okay, having said that, what the heck are you talking about? what is this thing about life, jobs, handshakes, paychecks, laziness, about first impressions?

I think many of us here, including myself, understand the importance of first impressions as they relate to job prospecting, professional networking, and being taken seriously. but come on, you are going off on a tangent; we are talking about communication in a casual online forum. I don't think I need to be lectured on the lessons of life, although that is appreciated and thoughtful of you. really, you are talking about a topic that is irrelevant to what I've said, remotely related at best. my casual use of the english language and my laxed application of proper capitalization has nothing to do with me not caring or being lazy, or not knowing what is right and proper. you missed the whole point of my argument.

no one ever said poor grammar was acceptable or excusable (in certain situations). proper grammar is and will always be important, same goes for punctuation and capitalization.

tkamiya, you are making a gross generalization here about english-speaking people talking lowly of foreigners. and I think you may also have misunderstood me. I was not talking about real-world situations; the focus was more on online communication and other forms of casual discourse online and in real life. I don't make any judgements on anyone just by how they type online--that's preposterous. I dunno who said that.

one last thing. this talk about "dumbing down" things and this mention of math. I've heard this comparison before, and it's not a good one. math and language are very different. the study of math lies in the search for absolutes, solutions that do not and cannot change. well, maybe there are some areas of math that don't have absolute answers, but you get the idea. language, on the other hand, is not as rigid as math mainly because language will always change. what is deemed correct today may be considered incorrect and unacceptable by a later generation. math is a completely different concept; a x b will always equal c, nothing will ever change that. so, no, 2 x 4 can never equal whatever we want it to be. on the other hand, the expressions "wazzzup, " "'sup, " "what's up, " and "hello, what have you been up to lately" all mean pretty much the same thing. whichever we choose to say depends on what discourse community we are in. "wazzzzup" is not by any means proper english or good spelling, but just because we wouldn't say it to our boss doesn't mean it's wrong as a means of communication (and personal expression), or dumb for that matter. its meaning is clear to those who understand it. the equation 2 x 4 =5 is wrong and will never be okay just because math is grounded on rigid principles and rules. language is very flexible. please do not apply this to some "getting a job" situation because I understand the importance of what not to say and what to say and how to say it when the situatuion calls for it.

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