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Another nail in the coffin of Old-School Naval Avaition..

OttoWrote8 said:
And to answer your question, no I'm not always this much of a moron with the English language.... but I have written peoples' evals, and for some reason the Navy decided that incomplete sentences/fragments and poor grammar/syntax reads more professionally than proper English. Go figure.
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Unless your evals that you're writing are getting completely rewritten by your seniors, then I'd call bs. You owe it to your folks to write the best eval possible and if it reads like a 5 year old wrote it then they'll get rewarded in kind. Caveat that with, if your dh is rewriting them, so be it, but I'd recommend writing them properly.
 
insanebikerboy said:
Unless your evals that you're writing are getting completely rewritten by your seniors, then I'd call bs. You owe it to your folks to write the best eval possible and if it reads like a 5 year old wrote it then they'll get rewarded in kind. Caveat that with, if your dh is rewriting them, so be it, but I'd recommend writing them properly.
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Absolutely. I have to fight the urge to write proper english on evals, because it's not "the right way" to write an eval. What I'm saying is, I generally prefer to do things the right way, but apparently military evals/fitreps are supposed to be a conglomeration of fragment senteces, free of any subject, and indirect objects where they belong. In fact, my biggest issue was having my correct english writeup "corrected" into "Navy"-speak which is incorrect english.
 
OttoWrote8 said:
Absolutely. I have to fight the urge to write proper english on evals, because it's not "the right way" to write an eval. What I'm saying is, I generally prefer to do things the right way, but apparently military evals/fitreps are supposed to be a conglomeration of fragment senteces, free of any subject, and indirect objects where they belong. In fact, my biggest issue was having my correct english writeup "corrected" into "Navy"-speak which is incorrect english.
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I just thought I'd mention that PSW has a degree in English Lit and doesn't have as much heartache about it as you do.
 
OttoWrote8 said:
Absolutely. I have to fight the urge to write proper english on evals, because it's not "the right way" to write an eval. What I'm saying is, I generally prefer to do things the right way, but apparently military evals/fitreps are supposed to be a conglomeration of fragment senteces, free of any subject, and indirect objects where they belong. In fact, my biggest issue was having my correct english writeup "corrected" into "Navy"-speak which is incorrect english.
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I don't get where your heartache is coming from. Sure each bullet on a fitrp/eval starts with a fragment, but that's because it's a quick summary bullet. Bullet implies a fragment. All the supporting words are full sentences.
exhelodrvr said:
You don't want them to be in a different format than everybody else's.
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This man speaks the truth. Ideally, the numbers should do the talking. If that fails, then the opening and closing statements should summarize the individual's performance. If the board needs to they can also read the bullets to get a quick summary without having to read all other words.

It's the same reason you don't use full sentences in a briefing slide.
 
OttoWrote8 said:
Absolutely. I have to fight the urge to write proper english on evals, because it's not "the right way" to write an eval. What I'm saying is, I generally prefer to do things the right way, but apparently military evals/fitreps are supposed to be a conglomeration of fragment senteces, free of any subject, and indirect objects where they belong. In fact, my biggest issue was having my correct english writeup "corrected" into "Navy"-speak which is incorrect english.
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Waah. You have about 10 lines to tell a guy's entire story. If you use full sentences, you are not utilizing space well.

Now, naval letters are another thing entirely. Even the naval correspondence manual says that passive voice is bad, but people still overuse it because it sounds more official.
 
phrogdriver said:
Waah. You have about 10 lines to tell a guy's entire story. If you use full sentences, you are not utilizing space well.

Now, naval letters are another thing entirely. Even the naval correspondence manual says that passive voice is bad, but people still overuse it because it sounds more official.
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No biggie. I don't roll around at night, in a cold sweat because of it. Just irks me that incorrect English is the standard in evals. It also bugs me how completely overused and, more importantly, INCORRECTLY used the word "myself" has become in the military today.

At every AOM it's "If you have any questions, please feel free to come talk to myself or LT Idiot".... WRONG!

This is all the tip of the iceberg. Rant complete.

/secure grammar Nazi
 
phrogdriver said:
Now, naval letters are another thing entirely. Even the naval correspondence manual says that passive voice is bad, but yet it is still overused by people because it has been shown to make them sound much more official.
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Fixed it for you with a side of verbosity :)

I couldn't figure out a way to slip in the infamous, anonymous "they."
 
"Now, naval letters are another thing entirely. Even the naval correspondence manual says that passive voice is bad, but yet it is still overused by people because it has been shown that they think it makes them sound much more official"

There you go... even more verbose, and I got the infamous and ambiguous "they" in there. How 'bout them apples!
 
As a 27 year Surface Sailor, I can say we Surface Sailors don't give a flying **** what you wear, as long as it's in accordance with the regs. If the regs allowed the wear of flight suits, as you desire, we would be perfectly fine with that.
 
Black Shoe AV8R said:
As a 27 year Surface Sailor, I can say we Surface Sailors don't give a flying **** what you wear, as long as it's in accordance with the regs. If the regs allowed the wear of flight suits, as you desire, we would be perfectly fine with that.
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You may want to explain that to the CO of the CG I was on, it was forbidden to wear flight suits in the wardroom for any meal.
 
As was I. Khakis only for the HSL det.

Of course, SWOs could wear SWOters and SWOveralls.

We just all came in Khaki bags. XOs head about exploded.
 
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