I think it's a fair, but just to simplify the argument:
Poor grammar often is an artifact of a person being inexperienced with reading, writing, or both. Either that or a sign of an unwillingness to learn. Both of these are red flags when hiring.
On the other hand, if your "zero tolerance" policy includes things like my usage of an oxford comma, chances are I don't want to work for you.
It probably depends if he's one of so many ignorant "grammar nazis" that don't understand how language works. Once you wade through the thin veneer of rule vomit, most prescriptivists have little to no clue about the language they are enforcing -- only demonstrating an ability to remember lists of uninformed, anachronistic and often ignorant rule sets that are usually intended for application in a specific milieu. They're usually foolish enough to then go and demonstrate this nonsensical approach in public. Usually as a pedantic and insufferably pretentious, high-friction social interaction: correcting minor typos, misapplying and enforcing meaningless rules, "correcting" conversational and idiomatic prose into stilted formal styles (thereby losing nuance and ultimately meaning). They then claim that it's important they do this because language is used to communicate, but they then demonstrate an almost perfect ability to use language in a non-communicative fashion.
On the other hand, even descriptivists can get a little frustrated when "too" and "to" are mixed up; "their", "there" and "they're" are conflated; "its" and "it's" are misused, and so on. It does demonstrate somebody who is unfamiliar with handling the language in the written form, but indeed the correlation between intelligence and understanding the complex English grammar in its fullness are undeniably low. It may simply be that a programmer with poor grammar has spent more time handling code (which also happens to be a milieu with very clear right and wrong feedback mechanisms for incorrect syntax and structure) than in handling written language. Feynman for example, wrote very little prose of his own.
tl;dr This employment tests only filters for people who have spent a great deal of time handling language and provides almost no information on their time handling code.
Dude, I so want to go there, apply, and write at the bottom of the page:
"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." -- And that's the law of the land. Please try to parse that until your head explodes.
Edit: I think I would add to that "Also, in your opinion does this mean that once you have been in the country for 14 years you are no longer eligible to be President?"
Combining "not" with "and" or "or" leads to ambiguity - there are no operator precedence rules in spoken language. I remember a "eating and drinking forbidden in the lab" notice with "not (eat or drink) == not eat or not
drink" scribbled underneath (in math notation).
By Contemporary Standard American English standards comma placements are strewn throughout the sentence with very little regard for clarity (removing a few would make it clearer), and the logical relation between clauses leaves something to be desired.
Standards for comma usage weren't established until almost the end of the 19th century. Some people used breathing or personal stylistics to decide on comma use, but there certainly was no general expectation that it would follow grammatical construction or logic.
Compared to some other 18th century documents I've read, the US Constitution is downright spare with commas.
However, by the standards of English then in effect, it makes perfect sense. Part of the problem is that written English prior to the 1900s included a large element of (conscious or subconscious) verbalization of what was written.
Try reading the Constitution out loud, taking appropriate breaks at the punctuation. It becomes a lot easier to understand and read; most (but not all) of the ambiguity will disappear.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.
The grammar rule is that you can remove a clause within the commas - so this becomes:
No Person except a natural born Citizen at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.
So unless you were born sometime before 1776 you aren't going to be hitting the campaign trail
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States (at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution), shall be eligible to the Office of President.
Neither shall any person be eligible to that Office [of the President] who shall not have attained to:
- the Age of thirty five Years, and
- been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
There, fixed it for you. It's not that difficult to understand when you know how legal parsing works. In this case, the use of two subordinate clauses at the end of the first sentence indicates that the first subordinate clause is subordinate to the phrase before it, while the second subordinate clause is subordinate to the ("super") clause preceding the third clause. The super clause consists of the first and second clauses, because they are joined by a coordinating conjunction.
No Person except [ [a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States] (at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution) ] shall be eligible to the Office of President.
The canons of statutory interpretation forbid absurd, unreasonable or unjust interpretations. I believe that ultimately this is what lets the courts discard the odd parse trees.
I think that's because the term "Oxford comma" is somewhat of a misnomer. The comma before "and" actually seems to be more preferred in the United States that in Britain.
"Opinions vary among writers and editors on the usage or avoidance of the serial comma. In American English, the serial comma is standard usage in non-journalistic writing that follows the Chicago Manual of Style. . . . It is used less often in British English,[5][6] where it is standard usage to leave it out, with some notable exceptions such as Fowler's Modern English Usage."
I prefer to use oxford comma where I'm writing a long list of items, and those items contain sets within themselves.
For instance, while listing computer brands that include Dell, HP, Acer, Toshiba, Alienware, Compaq and ASUS, I wouldn't use the oxford comma. But if I'm listing out speaker brands like Bose, Klipsch, JBL, Bang and Olufsen, and Altec Lansing, I think oxford comma helps to clarify the meaning intended.
relatedly, there's a little-used rule that lets you use a semi-colon as your list separator if the individual elements contain commas: "My favorite law firms are Dewey, Cheatem & Howe; Robinall, Widowes, & Laffin; and Sue, Grabbitt, & Runne."
In one case I discourage it as well, because with it you can't write the funniest sentence ever composed: "I would like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God."
Otherwise, no strong opinion, although I usually use it myself.
True! And it's also very funny. (But a shade less so than the parents sentence.) Maybe our descriptivist/purist friends should start a campaign to bring back the dative.
Right, that was one thing I thought of. Is he testing just for actual grammar rules like verb conjugation and such, or is he also including superficial style rules like "avoid the passive" or typographic things like how many spaces after a period?
Poor grammar often is an artifact of a person being inexperienced with reading, writing, or both. Either that or a sign of an unwillingness to learn. Both of these are red flags when hiring.
On the other hand, if your "zero tolerance" policy includes things like my usage of an oxford comma, chances are I don't want to work for you.