75ZT Community

In one of my other lives, on a railway modelling forum, I build a wiring loom for people who want to connect two disparate parts on their model railway layouts. They said it couldn't be done... so I went and did it Quite intricate and fiddly to put together but a really useful thing to have... I've been told

The other day I received a PM:-

"i wanna get 12 switchpilot wiring looms. send them to..."

This evening, I got a further PM asking why I hadn't responded.

Can YOU guess why I didn't respond readers?

Lives in Nigeria?

Didnt say please !

...And crappy punctuation to boot!

Wouldn't it be a bit impolite not to answer such a decent request?

Trebor wrote:Didnt say please !

Yes. Am I wrong to suppose that asking somebody to invest time and effort, especially at no cost, should be accompanied with please and thank you if appropriate?

It's sad that such basics of good manners are going to be lost. Or is it just a misleading impression and it has been always like that? Maybe without the easy access to the internet in general we wouldn't get in contact with people like these so often.

I scream at the TV when Eggheads is on and a challenger is asked 'do you want to go first or second' - very few say either 'first PLEASE' or 'second PLEASE' - normally it is just 'first' or 'second'.

Seems that good old fashioned courtesy is dead - and as for text speak being used in normal correspondence!!!!!

Language, of course, is an evolving beast and, although I decry the use of text speak, I take an interest in the way our language is evolving and try to guess what it might be like in 200 years time. One only has to see Chaucer's work in original manuscript to see the relatively breakneck speed with which our tongue is transforming. Discourtesy though. That is a horse of a different colour entirely.

Most people wouldn’t dream of speaking to others in the same way as they use a keyboard. It’s a shorthand developed through the necessity to be brief when typing,
added to the inability to spell following the now universal reliance on a spell checker. (The spell checker on here incidentally must be US influenced because I frequently have to correct from American to English).

All this has resulted in a brusqueness amounting to apparent rudeness and the only way to respond to it, is not to. A deafening silence can illicit further enquiry by the perp, which, if the follow-up is in the same discourteous vein, can be ‘managed’ by using excessive politeness.

It’s a matter of etiquette and we are the poorer for it being discarded. The temptation to fire off a broadside when faced with a perceived slight is well resisted and to the credit.

Jumper wrote: (The spell checker on here incidentally must be US influenced because I frequently have to correct from American to English).

There isn't a spell checker associated with this forum software. Blame your computer system spell checking utility.

This touches a real nerve with me.Long ago,whilst studying for my GCE O Levels we had to solve questions of English Grammar using clause analysis.We all found it so boring at the time,how history must judge us now,our language is a wonderful thing.I just cannot abide the shocking grammar surrounding us now,perhaps a sign of the times.My place of work is no exception,the current phrases used by management are enough to make your blood boil,yet when I question such rhetoric I am considered to be "living in the past".I even said "Thankyou" to somebody in a shop the other day and was accused of being patronising.................enough said?

podge wrote: even said "Thankyou" to somebody in a shop the other day and was accused of being patronising.................enough said?

I think I might have enquired whether they understood the meaning of the word.

In France it is a little different, walk in to a shop and the assistant will always say 'bonjour MONSIEUR' and on leaving an 'au revoir'.

Sadly manners in this country seem to be a thing of the past.....

Cheers

Mike