FWIW it's so nice to read a forum of good grammar and coherent arguments

[emilywantstogetin]

For no particular reason, I just would like to say that it is very nice to go on an internet forum and find most entries composed with good grammar, complete sentences, and coherent arguments.

No offense to the rest of the world wide web, but I often click into what seems like an interesting debate to find gibberish and overused emoticons.

So I just want to tell everyone on this forum 1)Thank you for not eroding your/mine/each others' brains and 2)regardless of admission results, obviously we are all smart people.

disclaimer: I will openly admit that I make grammar errors all the time, and have once tried to brush my teeth with a hairbrush (it was early), but n thing lIkE da FaBuL uS InTer$$@**nEt LeXiC n IDK my BFF Jill?

[rainy_day]

disclaimer: I will openly admit that I make grammar errors all the time, and have once tried to brush my teeth with a hairbrush (it was early), but n thing lIkE da FaBuL uS InTer$$@**nEt LeXiC n IDK my BFF Jill?

hahahah! this is the best.

[coyabean]

Oh god, I thought I was suddenly 80 years old the first time I saw that kind of lexicon. I, literally, cannot email/fb/text the younger generation in my family because this is how they respond. It's horrible.

[jacib]

Oh god, I thought I was suddenly 80 years old the first time I saw that kind of lexicon. I, literally, cannot email/fb/text the younger generation in my family because this is how they respond. It's horrible.

I teach SATs and one of my favorite students (who is admittedly a bit of a space cadet) confessed to me that one time she wrote a school essay in text message language (in turkish, they just tend to leave out vowels and y's a lot, e.g. bn gdiim mi?=ben gidiyim mi?=should i go?). I just kept looking at her and saying "No like how" "I just forgot what I was writing" "No but like how! How did you forget!" "I just forgot okay!"

It's so strange when a boss (who I am friends with) sends me a text that says something like "can u work 2morrow? i need some1 2 cover 4 james" Even in texts, I generally try to use proper punctuation and capitalization. Those can be dispensed with on occasion (especially capitalization), but I will always at least write the damn words out.

Edited January 3, 2010 by jacib

[alexis]

It's so strange when a boss (who I am friends with) sends me a text that says something like "can u work 2morrow? i need some1 2 cover 4 james" Even in texts, I generally try to use proper punctuation and capitalization. Those can be dispensed with on occasion (especially capitalization), but I will always at least write the damn words out.

Haha I feel the exact same way. I've generally done away with capitalization in text messaging & facebook, but I still think it's nice to spell out words.

Bad grammar irks me so much, I remember being shocked in undergrad when one of the psychology grad students used "it's" as possessive in a powerpoint lecture to about 100 students. And I get annoyed when, in facebook, people put, commas, after every bit of sentence, where there shouldn't be, a comma, it drives me, crazy. I keep getting tempted to post on this one girl's statuses: "learn how to use commas!!" but that would be rude and mean of me. And the billboards or advertisements that say things like "We sell Wines' and Beers'!"? Don't even get me started. I wish I knew why bad grammar annoys me so much. I know I'm not perfect either, but...seriously? Can no one get right something so simple that you learned in 3rd grade?

To the OP, I absolutely agree with you. I like this forum because a ) most people know how to write coherently, which is refreshing, particularly on the internet, and b ) people aren't jerks, and seem to (generally) talk to others almost like you would in real life, i.e. respectfully.

Edited January 4, 2010 by alexis

[johndiligent]

I agree. This one is pretty good. The Chronicle of Higher Education forums are also a nice sesquipedalian oasis in the l33t desert.

[Mumbet]

I'm used to the SomethingAwful.com forums which also thankfully lacks the usual internet stupidity. They combine a registration fee (which REALLY helps keep idiot kids out) and a really intense policy on banning / publicly humiliating users who lower the quality of discourse, and the result is that this comedy website has an unusually intelligent community around it. Its Debate and Discussion sub-forum especially contains ridiculously educated/informed posts.

The science subforum of that subforum has a pretty good Grad School Preparation "Megathread." You all might find it handy, http://forums.someth...hreadid=3194477 but the forums look like garbage to unregistered/unpaid users (this is intentional, again to scare off potential posters who are nonserious about joining and contributing).

Edited January 4, 2010 by Mumbet

[jacib]

I'm used to the SomethingAwful.com forums which also thankfully lacks the usual internet stupidity. They combine a registration fee (which REALLY helps keep idiot kids out) and a really intense policy on banning / publicly humiliating users who lower the quality of discourse, and the result is that this comedy website has an unusually intelligent community around it. Its Debate and Discussion sub-forum especially contains ridiculously educated/informed posts.

The science subforum of that subforum has a pretty good Grad School Preparation "Megathread." You all might find it handy, http://forums.someth...hreadid=3194477 but the forums look like garbage to unregistered/unpaid users (this is intentional, again to scare off potential posters who are nonserious about joining and contributing).

If my subfield has a hot journal, it's a blog edited by the Social Science Research Counsel called the The Immanent Frame. It has posts by the biggest names who study this subject, be they from Anthropology, Sociology, History, Political Science, Religion, Law, Philosophy or whatever. It's so cool! I know a professor (who has never been published on it) who assigned subscribing to it as part of her course requirements for a Poli Sci graduate class on Secularism. It's meant to be a forum so you can actually sign up for an RSS feed of comments on each individual post! It's so rad! Talk about raising the level of discourse on the internet. I think everyone in the field is really excited about it, and I hope I will get brownie points for mentioning in it in my SoPs (a few professors I want to work with write in it).

There are apparently similar projects in other fields, political philosophy (Public Reason) and philosophy of action/free will (The Garden of Forking Paths) and one more (general?) political one (Crooked Timber). I think those are more like traditional blogs with a set cast of characters rather than the Immanent Frame which functions more like a true journal (I don't know if any contributor has more than four or five posts, not cutting the "Off The Cuff" section) nor are they so willfully interdisciplinary. I don't read any of those (really not interested in their topics) but I do read Freakonomics because it often turns me onto really interesting economic papers (like the post about Peter Leeson's recent work on trial by ordeal and the several related to his work on historical piracy, as well as all these neat things that Emily Oster does, and Levitt's own work on prostitution among other things [i'm too lazy to go back through an find all the links, I just wanted to show that it actually links to the papers]).

Are there any good academic blogs in other fields? One thing I hate about blogs is that they inherently reward commenters who think fastest but not necessarily those who think "best". To have successful academic blogs, there needs to be a more Amazon style "was this comment pertinent and insightful" function so that the first comments posted aren't necessarily the first ones displayed.

Edited January 4, 2010 by jacib