Amusing Ebay Advert
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The use of 'they' as a singular pronoun of usually but not always indeterminate gender is well established since the earliest days of Modern English. I haste to add that this usage is not limited to Britain, as evidenced by its inclusion in Merriam-Webster dictionaries.
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I agree with BB. I would get an advert right.
Sure, it requires some effort and maybe a few UKP in fees for hosting, domain registration, some help from somebody knocking up such a page and so forth, but it saves hours in answering the same questions via e-mail, gives a very good impression to potential buyers (for starters, it shows you don't have anything to hide) and may even lead to a higher price.
At the very least, it will help you weed out the customers that are not interested in your aircraft, but cannot tell that from a small advert alone.
One reason is that, in most walks of business/life, the most desirable buyers are educated people who definitely do spot bad grammar and judge it accordingly.
And you certainly don't use the website or any other forms of communication to say bad things about customers, suppliers or other business partners. After all, you might need them in the future again. But also, potential customers might not be willing to trade with you if you've already shown that you are willing to take a business conflict public.
And I just realized, I probably spent more time composing this post than the author did composing the advert. And I don't even have a plane to sell.
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As for the comments relating to the maintenance side of it, yes I would have to agree that many of them seem to be full of unwarranted assumptions, speculation, and inaccurate knowledge.
Then again, there is always the Ryanair approach that any publicity is good publicity, especially if it comes free.
I am sure that any sufficiently interested buyer would not form an impression based on the sort of rubbish we all write here. That said, he probably could do with revising the spelling of his E-bay ad unless it was an intended artefact for dramatic effect.
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For example, Mad Jock's posts, despite their atrocious spelling and often highly colloquial register, still make him appear as a cultivated man on account of the reasoning ability and non-trivial knowledge shown in them.
Interestingly, from an armchair linguist's point of view[*] I have noticed that, even across languages, it seems to me that the incidence of poor spelling amongst educated users seems to be higher for those who speak "non-standard" varieties of the language.
To take the previous example, Scottish people seem to have more difficulty than English users of a similar cultural level, and I have noticed the same trend in Spanish, e.g., while proofreading theses from both Spaniards (including those for whom Spanish is not their primary language) and Latin Americans. Mind you, I'm not a native speaker of either tongue.
[*] I always wanted to be a humanities sort of person but was rubbish at it so ended up doing science.
Incidentally, how can you tell dyslexia rather than just somebody who cannot write (a serious Q)?
Perhaps trying to spot that a person has dyslexia isn't actually the right way round of thinking about things. If I get an Email from someone who otherwise seems reasonably bright, I'm always willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until proved otherwise.
Personaly, and like Mark Twain, I wud liyk to see zpelling abolished. I shudder when I think of the amount of time wasted by two billion people learning the difference between wright, write, right, rite and so on...
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Her grammar, punctuation and content all seemed pretty good: if you ignored the spelling they read like emails from an intelligent person.
I shudder when I think of the amount of time wasted by two billion people learning the difference between wright, write, right, rite and so on...
But the people that confuse these most often seem to be native English speakers that just approach the language phonetically, and get it wrong. I don't think it's a dyslectic trait.
English is a horrible language in that respect since there are multiple letter combinations that lead to the same phonetic pronounciation. As an example, a word like "ghoti" can easily be pronounced as "fish".
Ghoti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Well, if the guy has a genuinely nice aeroplane for sale, and he doesn't get the price he's asking for it because business people look down on him, two parties lose out. One is the seller, but the other is the businesspeople who missed out on a bargain. You can sometimes pick up good adverts on Ebay by looking specifically for things that are misspelled. Just because it's owner can't spell 'computer moniter' correctly doesn't mean the one they're selling won't work.
I can see where you're coming from, particularly when a website is integral to a business (e.g. lets you order directly etc), but I also tend to get jumpy when I see websites or brochures that are too slick, particularly if it's for charities or smaller organisations. It's often a sign that people's priorities are in the wrong place.
I'm currently looking for flying schools, and there seems to be a roughly inverse correlation between the quality of the website and the school's reputation. Does a good flying instructor necessarily know how to write good HTML? Is a small local flying school with a simple web-page necessarily worse than a large one where the cost of the swish website is borne by a much larger organisation? Will a school with an automatic course price calculator be able to do me as good a deal as one that doesn't have to update their databases to offer me a discount? Personally, I've been calling people or Emailing them, and I judge the companies more on the quality of their responses than their websites.
On the same grounds, if you already know how to do an internet page and buy a domain name in a few hours work, then it sounds a good idea. If you have to learn everything from scratch or pay someone to do it, it sounds a thorough waste of time, unless perhaps you're selling something really expensive. Would it really be so much worse to put up a few photos on Flickr? I would actually be slightly reassured to buy from someone with a 3 year old flickr account and an obvious interest in hillwalking and collecting vintage guitars, over buying from an advert on a recently created website.
Yep. In fact, I judge a company today by its website primarily. If that's shoddily done, outdated, with dead links, no Search function, no obvious place where I can download tech specs, drivers and such, they're not getting my business. Because it not only reflects on the product itself, but also on the quality of pre- and after-sales care.
I'm currently looking for flying schools, and there seems to be a roughly inverse correlation between the quality of the website and the school's reputation. Does a good flying instructor necessarily know how to write good HTML? Is a small local flying school with a simple web-page necessarily worse than a large one where the cost of the swish website is borne by a much larger organisation? Will a school with an automatic course price calculator be able to do me as good a deal as one that doesn't have to update their databases to offer me a discount? Personally, I've been calling people or Emailing them, and I judge the companies more on the quality of their responses than their websites.
On the same grounds, if you already know how to do an internet page and buy a domain name in a few hours work, then it sounds a good idea. If you have to learn everything from scratch or pay someone to do it, it sounds a thorough waste of time, unless perhaps you're selling something really expensive. Would it really be so much worse to put up a few photos on Flickr? I would actually be slightly reassured to buy from someone with a 3 year old flickr account and an obvious interest in hillwalking and collecting vintage guitars, over buying from an advert on a recently created website.
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Her grammar, punctuation and content all seemed pretty good: if you ignored the spelling they read like emails from an intelligent person.
More generally it is interesting to see how the advert unearths such polarised (polarized, if you prefer) views. For myself, when I read the advert I noticed the spelling errors and so on (although, of course, I don't know if I noticed all of the 'errors') but it didn't bother me greatly, I was more interested in the aircraft. I made some initial assumptions that the current owner(s) must be/include a maintenance engineer which from my experience means that the aircraft, however tatty it may be cosmetically, will have been lavished with TLC from a mechanical perspective. I don't know much about aircraft values but I suspect the successful bidder has got a good deal!
But back to grammar and stuff. The simple fact that many of the posts are dismissive or critical of the author of the advert should serve as a warning to anyone who seeks to communicate in writing, particularly on the web. The actual words used - irrespective of the accuracy of their spelling - is a very small part of the message that is actually conveyed.
And I do hope that any errors in spelling or grammar that I may not have spotted do not detract from the points that I am trying to make.
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but I also tend to get jumpy when I see websites or brochures that are too slick, particularly if it's for charities
Quote:
Her grammar, punctuation and content all seemed pretty good: if you ignored the spelling they read like emails from an intelligent person.
So are you saying someone who cannot spell - as a result of dyslexia or for any other reason - is not intelligent???
Her grammar, punctuation and content all seemed pretty good: if you ignored the spelling they read like emails from an intelligent person.
So are you saying someone who cannot spell - as a result of dyslexia or for any other reason - is not intelligent???
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bose-x
I think someone else said that
Hi mate, haven't heard from you in quite a while, good thread this yeh?
I think someone else said that
Hi mate, haven't heard from you in quite a while, good thread this yeh?
I am somewhat bemused by it. Brings PPRune down to a whole new level. Made even more amusing by some whose first language is not English to be casting stones!!
Personally I found the eBay ad quite amusing. But then I just read it as it was intended I suspect rather than reading conspiracy or fraud into it or deciding to attack the grammar and spelling......
***** I apologise in advance to the grammar and spelling police for any inadaquacies in my use of the English language. I am but a poor Yorkshireman.
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... while proofreading theses from both Spaniards (including those for whom Spanish is not their primary language) and Latin Americans. Mind you, I'm not a native speaker of either tongue.
BTW, a native English speaker would say "I hasten to add"
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Ironically, if you wanted to hear Welsh that has not been influenced by English over the last 150 years, you would have to visit the Castillian speaking country where I grew up.
Back to the opener, then.
To me it is quite obvious:
The ad's spelling IS horrible.
Perhaps the advertiser did this willingly, or at least consciously, to vent frustration.
Perhaps it was done unconsciously, through some kind of linguistical handicap.
Now I would be VERY careful, to say the least, buying from anyone unable or unwilling to control their emotions, especially towards outsiders, or to be aware of and compensate for their own limitations.
If even the ad is substandard, what would the actual state of the plane be? It might be OK, but it seems unlikely.
To me it is quite obvious:
The ad's spelling IS horrible.
Perhaps the advertiser did this willingly, or at least consciously, to vent frustration.
Perhaps it was done unconsciously, through some kind of linguistical handicap.
Now I would be VERY careful, to say the least, buying from anyone unable or unwilling to control their emotions, especially towards outsiders, or to be aware of and compensate for their own limitations.
If even the ad is substandard, what would the actual state of the plane be? It might be OK, but it seems unlikely.