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All is fair in love and war. (See body for part 2) (mander.xyz)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 7 months ago

Spelling is a poor indicator of competence.

[-] Instigate@aussie.zone 2 points 7 months ago

While that may be true, it’s a reasonable indicator of a person’s capacity to hear new information and then incorporate that into practice. If they’ve been told that they’re spelling a word wrong but then either can’t integrate that new knowledge or actively choose not to follow it, you’ve got someone who is either wilfully ignorant or lacks some capacity to integrate new information. Either that, or dyslexia.

Also, it genuinely depends on the work you do. My role has me writing up anywhere between 5-10,000 words worth of reports per day - proper spelling and grammar is key for competence in this role. I’ve seen reports where seemingly innocuous spelling mistakes completely change the meaning of text. Writing ‘can’ instead of ‘can’t’ and vice versa is an immediate example that comes to mind. I know this is an engineering grad, but clear communication is important in every role that includes managers, teams or other stakeholders.

[-] GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 7 months ago

Dyslexia is pretty common. Written language wasn't common among the human population till a few hundred years ago, using that as your measure of intelligence is a very poor fit. No it doesn't say anything about their ability to incorporate new information. Judging people based on spelling is just not a good indicator for anything except for the very narrow task of spelling and doesn't say anything meaningful about their intelligence in other areas. Using it as a way to discriminate in the workplace is especially bad as your are just being needlessly discriminatory to neurodivergent individuals. Neurodivergent people are constantly gatekept from promotions by neurotypicals for shallow surface indicators that actually have no bearing on their ability to perform in the role. It's just ableism.

[-] Instigate@aussie.zone 1 points 7 months ago

I never stated nor implied that spelling and grammar are a marker of intelligence - just a marker of being able to retain and use simple information. This was absolutely directed towards neurotypical people, and I probably should have mentioned dyslexia as an example of where this logic doesn’t follow.

It needs to be used to discriminate in fields that require abundantly clear communication urgently. I’m a child protection caseworker who does nothing but write up reports all day; if I had dyslexia I’d need serious accommodations to be able to perform the role at the level expected by the taxpayer who pays my salary. It absolutely can be done, but they’d likely need to hire a whole other person just to scribe. Have a look through my comment history; I’m well aware of dyslexia and its effects as I used to scribe for a friend in uni.