Category Archives: Grammar

When spambots get it wrong

I’ve posted before about the amusement that can be had at the expense of the clueless spammers who set up their bots with poorly written strings. Thanks to the various anti-spam tools now protecting this blog, there are few comments appearing in my spam folder. There was one today though, and the cluelessness reached new heights. The dolt writing the spambot was too dumb to set it up correctly to spew out a series of inane generic comments from a list, but instead put the whole lot of the comment strings in a single self-contradictory comment!

Here it is in all its glory:

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Thanks
 
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After I originally left a comment I appear to have clicked on the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and from now on each time a comment is added I get 4 emails with the exact same comment. Perhaps there is a way you are able to remove me from that service? Many thanks!
 
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This blog is just wonderful, apparently

One of the more interesting things about running a blog that is visited by a reasonable number of people is the fan mail. My immense modesty prevents me from keeping visible the thousands of positive comments that are posted here, but I thought I would give you an idea of the sort of praise I receive (and Akismet hides) on a daily basis. This small sample is all from the past 48 hours, with my comments in blue:

  • My brother recommended I might like this website. He was entirely right. This publish truly made my day. You cann’t believe simply how so much time I had spent for this info! Thanks!
    Actually, I cann, how so much! Many of my publishes make many people’s days. Please tell your brother I said “Hi!”, and thank him for the massage oil.
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    Don’t mention it; inspiration and thrills are all part of the service here.
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    Only monthly? I’m hurt. To make amends, send pics of yourself and your classmates to my email at pedowatch@fbi.gov.
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    Your suspicions are correct, and not just because of the huge cash kickbacks and the swarms of groupies that I struggle to keep away with a dirty stick. It’s feedback like yours that really makes it all worthwhile.
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    Cheers! <drinks beer> Glen, thanks to your erudite commentary, I am indeed conscious that you have been gratified for the last thirty times due to my online internet internet site. Thank you for the information.
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    Cheers! <drinks another beer> Although I didn’t get an invite to the Bricsys conference, I’m proceeding to watch out for Brussels right now. I’ll let you know if I see it. Wait, here it is! Oh, sorry, false alarm, it was only Bruges.
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    Cheers! <drinks yet another beer> Sorry, but after all this beer I’m finding that a little difficult.
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It’s very difficult to remain grounded when I’m being constantly bombarded with praise like this, but I somehow manage to stop it going to my head. I guess that’s because, well, I am pretty awesome.

AutoCAD 2009 – Automatic spell checker

I’ve seen quite a few positive comments about the new automated spell checking feature, with some people saying that it alone is enough to make AutoCAD 2009 worth the price of admission. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it is a nice feature. If you enter or edit text or mtext, a little dashed red line appears under words that are not in the dictionary. Right click on an unknown word and the menu will offer several suggestions, allow you to ignore the word or add it to the dictionary.

It does have limitations, though, such as not working with attributes. Don’t expect it to do the things that Word does, such as auto-correct words or check your grammar. There is nothing to inform you that you have used a valid word in the wrong context, so AutoCAD considers this to be a perfectly valid sentence:

Eye cant under stand how any one cud sell any off they’re worms rung wen awl 0f there worlds ate testes width a auto mated shell checked.

Translation:

I can’t understand how anyone could spell any of their words wrong when all of their words are tested with an automated spell checker.

Grammar and AutoCAD

I have a lot of posts about AutoCAD and a few about grammar, but I expect this will be the only post I ever make that combines the subjects.

Autodesk founder John Walker, a very prominent figure in AutoCAD’s history, has written an article about the correct use of the apostrophe. While I enjoyed it, I think it’s too insulting to be useful. People struggling with the correct use of the apostrophe are unlikely to get past the part where they are called morons, to read the useful advice below.

If you just want simple apostrophe advice without being belittled, I suggest you look at the main page of the The Apostrophe Protection Society instead.