dsandler.org/wp

A thoughtful reader writes:

I completely reject Dogma
2000. :-)

But then, I’m one of those freaks who actually proofreads his
emails before hitting “Send”. Not that I catch every mistake, but trying
to use correct spelling and grammar has always been important to me.

The notion that “Orthographic rules are not made for the net” is
pure bunk. “The net” is about communication, and communication, by
definition, requires rules. Sure, you can afford to bend the rules a bit
and still have your message understood. You can drop or resend a few
packets; you can misspell a word or use the wrong tense here and there,
but as a message becomes less and less compliant with the standard, its
audience has to work harder and harder to decode its meaning, until some
point where they give up trying and perhaps reject even that which they
have gleaned.

I’m a hopeless pedant myself, as is my (linguistics-major) wife.

The part about D2K that I was interested in is the focus on the
message. There are people who are worried that their lack of style
(or grammar) will prevent them from being allowed to express their ideas
at ALL, and to them I say, “it’s more important that you express
yourself. Dot the i’s later.”

But I reject the notion (of course) that the style and correctness are
valueless. Hey, that’s why it’s called “dogma” — it’s
supposed to be overbearing and narrowminded!