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Database Underground | Sean McCown » You Can't Spell your own Job?

August 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

You Can't Spell your own Job?

OK, I had a different blog planned today, but I just got my PASS newsletter and got inflamed again. I hope I don't have to go over this again, but I'll do it as many times as I have to.

DBA = A single DBA.
DBAs = More than one DBA.
DBA's = An object owned by a DBA. The DBA's idea.
DBAs' = An object owned by more than one DBA. The DBAs' toolkit.

It's not that I expect the ordinary person to know these rules necessarily, but I would expect the Professional Association for SQL Server to know how to pluralize DBA.

Posted by Sean McCown on August 2, 2007 07:38 AM


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Literacy in the data center? Among the Turing machines? They ain't English majors, you know!

They doan need no stinkin 'postrofes!

Posted by: jwaldron at August 3, 2007 11:18 AM

Competency in natural language is, sadly, no longer a requirement for graduation from the Eighth Grade.
Reading on-line newsletters, email, forum posts, and even blogs is often an exercise in frustration, if not an outright invitation to violent fantasy towards the author.
I find it very strange that native English speaking programmers who go to the effort of learning the most obscure aspects of C syntax can't be bothered with observing rudimentary English grammar when writing. Language is language whether it is C, ASM, T-SQL or Farsi.
Writing poorly in any language is often a sign of sloppy thinking and poor organization.
Poorly written code won't compile, doesn't work as intended, or possibly opens yet another avenue for exploits into the target system.
Poorly written natural language, English or otherwise, detracts from the point the author is making; as well as diluting the effectiveness of their argument, which might otherwise be convincing.
English wasn't my major, neither was CS, although I ended up writing code for a living. Writing well in any language is worth the effort required.

My personal pet peeve is the oblivious misuse or confusion between
"they're" - contraction of "they are"
"their" - possessive form of "they"
"there" - an adverb or pronoun depending on usage.

Posted by: jms at August 16, 2007 08:43 AM

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