[rdl]

I just thought about this: pg complained about people with strong accents potentially being at a disadvantage. I've noticed a few other YC founders (and successful sfba founders in general) who have strong accents; they're at a disadvantage, but it's not terminal. (the worst accents compared to overall level of success otherwise are probably Singlish speakers; EE are sometimes thick accents but generally standard vocabulary and grammar, and Indian English is a little bit of vocabulary but mainly pacing and accent, and generally not very far off from SFBA American English after a few months)

What I don't see is a lot of founders who are bad at written communication. Maybe it's self-selection (those who can't write are less likely to try to write online, so I won't see them as frequently, if ever), but it really seems like being good at written English is a requirement for being a successful tech entrepreneur now. "Good at written English" doesn't necessarily mean perfectly idiomatic and grammatical American College English, but clear and persuasive when the reader is fluent in (American, College, Middle/Upper class, Standard) English.

The nice thing is written English is much easier for "tech people" to learn; the best training is reading lots of well-written English, and you need to do that to participate in the technology and startup world anyway. The keys are: 1) having good source material (there's a tipping point, like some sizable non-US English communities -- which is why Singlish is a thing) 2) actually caring.

[sillysaurus2]

Counterexample: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2483053

Replace Drew's intentional lack of capitalization with this "your/you're swap," and you've got the same situation.

It seems like people are just prejudiced, and are so prejudiced that they feel justified in calling people out on a forum under the guise of "helping" them.

Yes, grammar is powerful, but this isn't a situation where it matters. They were expressing empathy. They weren't writing a press release. And we can't seem to find it in ourselves to avoid bikeshedding this thread.

[grey-area]

It seems like people are just prejudiced, and are so prejudiced that they feel justified in calling people out on a forum under the guise of "helping" them.

When learning a language, I love gentle corrections to the many inevitable faults, and wish people would do it more often, because it helps you improve. Perhaps that varies with the person, but please don't interpret them as insults or bikeshedding to reinforce someone's ego, as they very rarely are. Communication is also about authority, tone and style, so just being able to guess what someone meant is not always good enough.

This was just a small note to this person about a repeated mistake which is undermining their credibility. If they take note, their communication will be improved for the rest of their life by not confusing these two homophones.

[rdl]

your/you're isn't unclear (usually).

"how is babby formed" type stuff is what is incomprehensible.

[sillysaurus2]

Actually, you comprehended them just fine. This is why I'm saying people are prejudiced. A prejudice is when people aren't consciously aware of why they're mistaken.

[rdl]

I picked a bad example (which is an example itself of what I'm talking about; it's not specific to the rules of grammar...)

"How is babby formed" is still generally a bad question, marginally worse than "Where do babies come from?", in that it's unclear if the focus is impregnation or gestation, and "babby" could be potentially misinterpreted as "babble".

IMO OP was borderline "bad at written communication" too, at least if the goal was to convey factual details of the situation. It was entertaining, but unclear. Sometimes obscuring key details is the goal, but generally not in technical or business writing.

[sillysaurus2]

It's almost impossible to imagine someone reading their comment and misunderstanding them, unless they were bad at reading English.

The point you're trying to make is based on the mistaken assumption that they were being unclear. They weren't. Nothing was obscured. No one seriously believed that they meant to imply ownership instead of "you are."

They also weren't doing technical or business writing. It was empathy, which is sometimes helpful.

[nknighthb]

Any time that mistake is made in something I'm reading, I have to read backward and forward several times to ensure I know which it was supposed to be. This requires additional time and effort.

At the very least, not making an effort to use the correct word is extremely disrespectful of your audience and their time.