Reboot Camp

I think that is the hardest I’ve ever laughed at a CHE post/blog/essay/article. Well done, and thank you.

Just say, “Thank you for your feedback.”  TPlummer just wanted to be heard and acknowledged, something that most of us need/want from time to time.  It doesn’t cost you anything, doesn’t take more than a minute of time, and needs no psychological investment. 

Through parenting, I’ve learned much about that applies to collegial exchange.  I used to stress about my teenage daughter’s behavior–was her silence a symptom of her disdain for me, drug use, sexual misconduct?–when a friend, who had been through it all before with 2 teenage daughters, said, “99% of the time it’s not about you. It’s about her hair.”  While we do want to be vigilant, as parents and as professionals, for signs of trends that we may need to address, most of the time it’s something inconsequential.  TPlummer may have been cut off on the highway en route to the office, got the dregs at the bottom of the coffee pot, been dissed by the dean  in a meeting, and a surly student; then, feeling particularly impotent, read your essay and felt the need to make a mark.  Rather than give this incident more importance than it deserves, let it go, quickly and gracefully.

Art Linkletter wrote that when he received abusive mail with a return address, he returned the letter with a form letter explaining that he thought the addressee should know that some unbalanced person was misusing that name and address as a cover. He said the wonderful thing was how many thank-you letters he received.

I have read many of your pieces on S&W, and I must say I haven’t perceived them as arrogant or offensive.  I find them screamingly funny.  Perhaps the fault is simply in Mr. Plummer’s sense of humor.

Interesting commentary. Why do you assume that T. Plummer is male?

Why do you feel the need to respond to ugly e-mail?  Why attempt to engage in a dialog, flip or otherwise?  The beauty of e-mail is the ability to filter the meat from the rest.  My suggestion is to put “T. Plumber” on the “straight to trash” list and never be bothered by her again.

Yes, if the goal is to disarm your opponent, that is definitely the best response. I think it would leave Mr/Ms Plummer in quite a state.

Question: what is the best way to make an email response look like an automated response?
 

With all due respect, if you actually think that’s “hate mail,” you haven’t spent much time on the Internet. Online communication, for better or worse, is a full-contact sport.

That’s hate mail?  The normal Lingua Franca interaction must be rather Victorian.

I don’t think that was hate mail either. I wonder if the blog author has ever worked in retail?

I am not American, and have never read S&W. In fact I first heard of the book via Pullum’s blog posts. I still found the writings of the Destrunktionalists very helpful, because most of their criticism applies equally to many other handbooks on writing. It has shown me I do not have to settle for vacuous injunctions such as “omit needless words”: in the form of JM Williams and others, the genre of writing advice which has decent empirical foundations, is practicable, and avoids being plain wrong is now established and growing.
Currently I am reading Writing in English: A Guide for Advanced Learners by Siepmann, Gallagher, Hannay & Mackenzie (A. Francke/UTB) which is somewhat more detailed than the smaller of Williams’ books and designed especially for German speakers. Though I’d have my doubts about its accessibility for non-native non-linguists, it’s certainly helping me understand how and why I reorganize sentences and paragraphs when translating from German or editing German-flavored English.
What I’d really like to see would be more reviews of books like this that are on roughly the right side of the style-handbook discussions. I’m sure there are enough things in there worth some comment and argument. In the general agenda of weaning the world off S&W, it might be just as fruitful to suggest books we should read rather than remind us of the one we shouldn’t.
What puzzles me about this post is therefore why Prof. Pullum should bother returning to gnaw the old bone of the people who don’t like the S&W criticism. Attacking S&W was a good way of getting attention for a good cause; but when you attack something as revered as that, there is going to be a reaction. Since the anti-S&W message was disseminated in mass media, it probably reached many thousands of people; is it any surprise that one or two of them were nasty enough to respond in this way?  Maybe it’s time to just give S&W, and all the associated phenomena, a rest. If Strunk and White had never existed, there would still be plenty to talk about, no? I propose that if there is a non-White Christmas in Edinburgh, it should be followed by a Strunk-less year.

Over the years I’ve come to think that “arrogant” is usually almost completely free of content. Tell me what the word means over and above the mere fact that the person doesn’t like me.

If someone wants to get to me, they’ll have to be a bit more specific. And I also, in general, find it easier to take abuse from complete strangers than from people who know me.

When I receive unsolicited nonsense I always hit my wouldbe correspondent with a chunk of silence.

Dear former Dean of UCSC Graduate Programs, as a former UCSC grad student, I am proud to see that you still maintain your sense of humor and are sharing it with the rest of the world. Sadly, many will not understand your humor (see responses below). Not that your work needs a reference, but I believe that Ricky Gervais’ article, “The Difference Between American and British Humor,” explains it quite well, http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/09/the-difference-between-american-and-british-humour/?iid=op-x-time100. Cheers to you and thanks for the fellowship years ago!

While this doesn’t really qualify as hate mail, it is the kind of correspondence that can get under your skin, especially if you perceive just a scintilla of truth it it. I speak from experience of that nagging feeling that perhaps an editorial (my pre-blog way of sounding off) skewered someone’s sacred cow without properly acknowledging the pain that could cause among believers and making the right kind of a burnt offering out of the carcass.

But your post illustrates one of the very few really good lessons that management has taught me over the years. Once upon a time, in the era before e-mail, I received a similar letter that got in my craw. So [note that I begin with "so"!]  I did what any self-respecting editor would: I wrote a scathing reply, packed with humorous quips at my correspondent’s expense. But, in those days before e-mail, I had to wait for the 2 p.m. mail pickup, so I took a draft to the executive director of the association I then worked for. He read the original letter, read my reply, and chuckled in all the right places. Then he looked up at me and said, “It’s a fine letter, but do me a favor. Put in in your out box until tomorrow’s mail.” That’s all he said, but I liked him, thought him a good administrator, and so I put the letter on ice for 24 hours.

The next morning, I picked it up and re-read it. Then I wrote something innocuous, though still true, to the effect that I was “sorry” that my reader had missed the point I was trying to make and didn’t intend to annoy him. I also said that I hoped he would continue to read our publication and let us know what he thought. And yes, I really did mean that. I didn’t take back what I had said, but I also didn’t tick off a paying subscribe — never a small consideration.

I hope your posting here makes you feel just as good, I hope you decided to send a response of some sort, and I hope the S&W fan becomes a Lingua Franca reader. Really, it would be good for him (or her).
Bruce Smith

I ran into this conundrum after a recently published article.  I responded to the email attacks with how sad I felt that the author really had nothing better to do than berate me.  As this author said, usually I just stop reading if I’m not enjoying an article.  I don’t know what it is about the current human condition, except the permissiveness of the internet, that makes people think there aren’t real feelings attached to those they insult.  That is why I wrote back.  To make sure I got that through their head.  All except one apologized.  The other just complimented me on my use of the word “ad hominem”.  Some people see the error of their ways but never think you can win an argument with an ignorant person.

Was it Voltaire who replied to someone: Dear Sir, I am in the smallest room in the house and I have your letter in front of me. Soon it will be behind me. Of course it doesn’t work with email. 

But Mr Plummer’s missive isn’t hate mail. It seems that he even agrees with what you said about Strunk and White. Perhaps he is a gentleman with a very thin skin and was genuinely offended by your comments. Although I have to agree that his motives for sending the message are questionable. But even if his sole intention was to gratuitously hurt your feelings, his effort does not come within a bull’s roar of being hate mail. 

Apart from the lack of any obscenities or coarse language, there is no detailed inventory of the way in which your extended family are and all your ancestors going back several thousand years were all irremissiby odious and vile pond-scum without a single redeeming feature amongst the lot of them –  coupled, of course, with their all being hideously ugly and perverted garbage on feet universally loathed because of their persistent indulgence in
acts
so unspeakably disgusting and unnatural that they cannot possibly be related. 

And nor is there any detailed description of how he intends to cripple you and have your children sold into slavery. By Internet standards he’s being friendly.

And by the way, while I agree totally with just about everything you say about Strunk and White, which must be the most over-rated book in the history of the planet, aren’t you taking their comments about writing without adjectives and adverbs a tad literally? Sure, the way they put it is dumb, but I have always assumed they were suggesting that one should not over use adjectives and adverbs rather than never use them. Perhaps I am over-rating them myself, but I find it hard to credit they could be as silly as they seem to be.

But please don’t think I am trying to defend them. Their views about “shall” versus “will” alone should have seen them put to the rack.