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Re:My U.S. Border Nightmare by bdonlan on Thursday February 02, 2012 @10:33PM (#3545603)
Ow. Please put in some paragraph breaks, it's a nightmare to try to read a long wall of text like that without some kind of landmark to latch on to.
Re:My U.S. Border Nightmare by mwoodworth on Thursday February 02, 2012 @10:41PM (#3545628)
I think he might have been a little upset when he wrote it.
Re:My U.S. Border Nightmare by jnbiche on Thursday February 02, 2012 @10:37PM (#3545614)
You read that and your first reaction is punctuation?
Re:My U.S. Border Nightmare by groggles on Thursday February 02, 2012 @10:39PM (#3545622)
It is mentally arduous to try to parse through it. I really tried but had to give up.

Punctuation exists for good reason.

Re:My U.S. Border Nightmare by jnbiche on Thursday February 02, 2012 @11:16PM (#3545726)
OK, fair enough. I thought you were just nitpicking. And after reading about his ordeal, I wasn't really open to nitpicking. As one human to another, I would suggest that when commenting on a highly-emotional blog post like this one, where the author has lived through a difficult experience, prefacing your criticism on their punctuation/grammar with a simple "wow, tough experience" or some other kind words would go a long way. Chances are high that this individual will read your words.

We can debate whether or not the ordeal was deserved or not, but I don't think many of us can honestly deny that he lived through a tough experience.

To those downvoting me, that's fine. But please realize that I was trying to uphold one of this community's core tenets, which is don't write things you wouldn't say to someone in real life (paraphrasing). I don't know groggles, but I'm guessing that he/she is an emotionally-mature adult, and so I can't imagine him/her saying to someone who just described being jailed and harassed by customs, "Please enunciate better when you talk -- I had a hard time understanding you". To me at least, this kind of attitude represents a major reason for the decline of online communities. Sometimes I just can't watch it happen without saying something.

Re:My U.S. Border Nightmare by izaidi on Thursday February 02, 2012 @11:43PM (#3545806)
Whether intentionally or not, your own post came off as fairly rude, in my opinion much moreso than the parent, which is probably why you were downvoted.
Re:My U.S. Border Nightmare by huggyface on Friday February 03, 2012 @09:57AM (#3547273)
You are replying to a different person than the original poster.

Secondly, no, emotional situations don't excuse the delivery. Unless he was literally writing a cry for help from confinement somewhere, he can take the time and respect readers by putting in some semblance of appropriate formatting. If it's just a rant then so be it, but it doesn't belong here.

Thirdly, HN isn't a support group. I'm not going to bother with comforting words because the parts I could decipher give the image of a very naive, assumptive, flippant person. So many mistakes were made -- on their part (at the very outset by proclaiming a right to enter another country -- that I'm surprised that they spent the effort seeking sympathy.