Question
Does spelling and grammar have an effect on the information a text contains?
For:
- Take a text that conveys a true proposition (e.g. Mt Everest is the highest mountain in the world).
- Perform some really complicated errors.
- End up with a text that conveys no true proposition (e.g. Mt Everest is the highest fountain in the world).
But:
- What do we mean by "conveys"? Conveys to whom?
- There may be a person for whom your errors make sense (e.g. fountain means mountain).
- To claim no information where some may exist for others is egocentric.
Closer to the question:
- Consider "txt".
- To one person it appears to be mangled English.
- To others, it is perfectly understandable and well-formed.
- Then: is the information in a txt text different from the equivalent English text.
- Is this a problem of translation? The translation between the two seems as perfect as possible.