My vastly over-priced webmaster (VOPWM) has fussed at me several times because I will occasionally break some of your more massive single paragraph comments into their component paragraphs, or I will occasionally correct your obvious and sometime distracting misspellings (not to say that I don’t make some whoppers myself). His position is that the corrections and paragraphing are against the somewhat self-imposed standards of the blogging community.
Though he is overpriced, he is also very very good. So I try to keep him happy. At the same time, Pulpit Pimps is not simply a web site. On the typical secular website, you want the morons in the crowd to make themselves look as stupid as possible. But on this site, I don’t consider those who disagree with me as morons. It is not my intent to make them look stupid or “let” them look stupid based on a poor command of the English language. I’ve learned the hard way not to make judgments about people based on the way they look, speak, or write.
I am pretty well determined that each person who presents an argument or attempts to defend a position be judged on the content of their posting, not their command of the English language. And let’s face it, one of the outstanding characteristics of this site is, besides the sterling prose I turn out, discussions and the contributions made by each of you.
From my point of view, it is essential that your comments get through with as little “noise” as possible. That is why, whether the reader agrees with my position or not, I make corrections, allowing the full force of their argument to get through without the distraction of misspellings or atrocious grammar. After all, the grammar a person uses is not an automatic indicator of their thought process or the validity of the logic of their argument.
When I can’t clearly make out what the person intended, or when the person is so clearly someplace out near Neptune (like the space cadet a couple of months ago), I leave the posting alone and perhaps make a comment on the complete lack of substance in the posting.
To keep my VOPWM happy, or to at least keep him from getting too upset, I decided to run a poll and see what you, the readers thought of my efforts and adjust my actions based on the results of that poll. So far, the results have indicated that most of you are comfortable with my efforts. Of the 27 people who have responded, four have said they hate the corrections. One has stated he would rather I didn’t make the correction. Twenty-one have stated that they either don’t have a problem with the corrections or love it because it makes them look so smart. As a result, unless I get a good deal of blow-back later on, I will continue to correct spelling and minor grammatical gaffes in your posting.
I’ll probably have to double my VOPWM’s salary to keep him happy. If any of you want to help pay his wages please send cash or a money order to:
“Keep My VOPWM Happy” Ministry
12456 Anathema Lane
Bowie, MD 20716
Every contribution will receive a free copy of “Flock Fleecing for Fun and Profit.” All you have to pay is shipping and handling which is separate from your contribution. Shipping and handling for this free resource is $15.00.
I think it is very good that you make the corrections. It is very distracting to read a posting full of spelling and grammatical errors. In many cases I miss the entire point because I am put off by the mistakes. My vote is for you to continue to edit. I appreciate the fact that you want to give people a place to voice their opinion without them showing themselves as total illiterates.