Language Professors STILL Hate Him

Recently expounded upon the hatred of language professors, we did. Read more about that here or continue reading herein because it's all pretty much repeated anyway. Google prefers their definition of good writing and as long as they can't tell the difference, we'll continue recycling words and sentences into compositions looking almost but not quite precisely different.

Popular wisdom, which is hardly ever wrong about this type of thing, indicates that we must write good, else Google computers wielding their precious +1 algorithm will slap us silly with electrons of death. Guidance emanating from well-meaning profiteers purports to project our profundity to the top of search engine results if we only adhere to a few simple rules.

Unsure we are, concerning just how to emerge unscathed from Google algorithm revisions assigned cutesy monikers such as Panda. Perhaps subsequent slap-downs should answer to the name 'Say goodbye to your livelihood' or 'So you think you can write?' Pleasant Pandas subsisting on lusciously tender bamboo shoots at the Washington Zoo hardly call to mind digital algorithms doing jobs previously held by language professors.

That's why those folks have grown hateful, I think, but writing in the first-person usually is frowned upon as stringently as run-on sentences but evidently rules of writing have changed with the advent cheap servers and high bandwidth. We agree.

We write good, that's what we do. That much is easy. We vary sentence length, we use action verbs, we profusely pepper our profundities with prepositions positioned properly. Alliteration and a spell checker don't hurt.

So, therefore, we know it's good, but we hope we haven't deployed too many commas per sentence as we mightily struggle to appease computer software (is there any other kind of software? Actually, yes) written by humans with an entirely different view of syntax. See, when you write a computer program you receive immediate and specific feedback vis-à-vis your grammatical skillz.

Now we depend on these cubicle dwellers to implement our mostly universal definition of good writing. A little scary it would be if we had time to be fearful in between 12-hour shifts at McDonald's to recoup the income we lost when Panda decreed our writing to be not so good. No salt on the fries, please.

'Him' represents a direct object in the context of sentence structure. We wonder how Google measures that metric (sentence structure), but they aren't telling and they never will. Google's only leverage is their cloak of secrecy. Expect Google representatives to dole out hints and tickles as to their vaunted filtering algorithms, but concurrently expect not to ever see the actual algorithms. Your good writing is your only reward, and you can't eat it.

We're mostly sure that the hated, as referenced in the phrase Language Professors STILL Hate Him, are those who would supplant tenured teachers of writing good. Those on 9-month contracts toiling to balance 12 credit hours a semester prefer not to be replaced by a computer, even if it's an Apple, which it's not.

Difficult is is to focus hate on cyberspace-inhabiting disembodied nameless faceless well-meaning salaried functionaries. Expect the language professors to focus their hot burning hate onto supplemental sources that are nearby and handy and less insulated. They're gonna get mad and angry at their students.

We conclude that this writing be concluded after 667 words. You will probably never read this due to the salient fact that Google won't like the arduously written writing. Language professors will boil with vitriol in their politically correct faux-ivory towers, warming themselves in the knowledge that Google will hopefully never truly prefect the art of identifying good writing. Much good writing will go noticed. We humans will come together and rise up against the machines that would pass judgement on our compositions.

It could happen.

In summary, write your good stuff and don't try to make Google like it. If humans like it they will read it to each other in the Student Union as they sip latte, munch luscious biscotti, and wait for their calculus final.