Bergeron, Corrie (cbergeron@learningventures.com)
Thu, 6 May 1999 13:41:34 -0500
From: "Bergeron, Corrie" <cbergeron@learningventures.com> Subject: Apropos of clear communication... Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 13:41:34 -0500
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A friend sent me the following timely tidbit...
Corrie Bergeron
corrie@itasca.net <mailto:corrie@itasca.net>
Senior Instructional Designer
The Graduate School of America http://www.tgsa.edu
330 2nd Ave South, Ste. 550, Minneapolis, MN 55401
888-879-6745 x 283 FAX 612-339-8022
On June 1, 1999 The Graduate School of America will change its name to
Capella University. For more information please visit
http://www.tgsa.edu/namechng.html.
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This was in the Washington Post. Copies also can be found at:
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-05/02/167l-050299-idx.ht
ml
Taking Liberties
The Pluperfect Virus
By Bob Hirschfeld
Sunday, May 2, 1999; Page B05
A new computer virus is spreading throughout the Internet,
and it is far more insidious than last week's Chernobyl menace.
Named Strunkenwhite after the authors of a classic guide to
good writing, it returns e-mail messages that have
grammatical or spelling errors. It is deadly accurate in its
detection abilities, unlike the dubious spell checkers that come
with word processing programs.
The virus is causing something akin to panic throughout
corporate America, which has become used to the typos,
misspellings, missing words and mangled syntax so acceptable
in cyberspace. The CEO of LoseItAll.com, an Internet startup,
said the virus has rendered him helpless. "Each time I tried to
send one particular e-mail this morning, I got back this error
message: 'Your dependent clause preceding your independent
clause must be set off by commas, but one must not precede
the conjunction.' I threw my laptop across the room."
A top executive at a telecommunications and long-distance
company, 10-10-10-10-10-10-123, said: "This morning, the
same damned e-mail kept coming back to me with a pesky
notation claiming I needed to use a pronoun's possessive case
before a gerund. With the number of e-mails I crank out each
day, who has time for proper grammar? Whoever created this
virus should have their programming fingers broken."
A broker at Begg, Barow and Steel said he couldn't return to
the "bad, old" days when he had to send paper memos in
proper English. He speculated that the hacker who created
Strunkenwhite was a "disgruntled English major who couldn't
make it on a trading floor. When you're buying and selling on
margin, I don't think it's anybody's business if I write that 'i
meetinged through the morning, then cinched the deal on the
cel phone while bareling down the xway.' "
If Strunkenwhite makes e-mailing impossible, it could mean
the end to a communication revolution once hailed as a
significant timesaver. A study of 1,254 office workers in
Leonia, N.J., found that e-mail increased employees'
productivity by 1.8 hours a day because they took less time to
formulate their thoughts. (The same study also found that
they lost 2.2 hours of productivity because they were
e-mailing so many jokes to their spouses, parents and
stockbrokers.)
Strunkenwhite is particularly difficult to detect because it
doesn't come as an e-mail attachment (which requires the
recipient to open it before it becomes active). Instead, it is
disguised within the text of an e-mail entitled "Congratulations
on your pay raise." The message asks the recipient to "click
here to find out about how your raise effects your pension."
The use of "effects" rather than the grammatically correct
"affects" appears to be an inside joke from Strunkenwhite's
mischievous creator.
The virus also has left government e-mail systems in disarray.
Officials at the Office of Management and Budget can no longer
transmit electronic versions of federal regulations because
their highly technical language seems to run afoul of
Strunkenwhite's dictum that "vigorous writing is concise." The
White House speechwriting office reported that it had received
the same message, along with a caution to avoid phrases such
as "the truth is. . ." and "in fact. . . ."
Home computer users also are reporting snafus, although an
e-mailer who used the word "snafu" said she had come to
regret it.
The virus can have an even more devastating impact if it
infects an entire network. A cable news operation was forced
to shut down its computer system for several hours when it
discovered that Strunkenwhite had somehow infiltrated its
TelePrompTer software, delaying newscasts and leaving news
anchors nearly tongue-tied as they wrestled with proper
sentence structure.
There is concern among law enforcement officials that
Strunkenwhite is a harbinger of the increasingly sophisticated
methods hackers are using to exploit the vulnerability of
business's reliance on computers. "This is one of the most
complex and invasive examples of computer code we have
ever encountered. We just can't imagine what kind of devious
mind would want to tamper with e-mails to create this burden
on communications," said an FBI agent who insisted on
speaking via the telephone out of concern that trying to e-mail
his comments could leave him tied up for hours.
Meanwhile, bookstores and online booksellers reported a surge
in orders for Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style."
Bob Hirschfeld, who enjoys receiving e-mails in plain English,
lampoons the news at his Web site, bobsfridge.com.
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
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