Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Yoshiyuki]

Could anyone kindly tell me how to say the following phenomenon in English? Let's say you write something and send it by e-mail to your friend, who finds it completely incomprehensible on his or her computer screen because the words of the mail have turned out to be something else that means nothing at all. Thanks in advance.
Yoshiyuki

[trueblue]

Through the email process, it could have been encoded improperly. Usually, when this happens, it appears as gibberish.

Tom

[Yoshiyuki]

[quote="trueblue"]Through the email process, it could have been encoded improperly. Usually, when this happens, it appears as gibberish.

Tom[/quote]

Thank you,Tom, for your information. May I understand that an email that has turned into an unintelligible one is called "gibberish"? I wonder if I can ask you another question? How would you tell your correspondent about the 'gibberished' email when you have received one?
Thank you.
Yoshiyuki

[Meadowlark]

You should still be able to reply to the email you received in the normal manner that you would reply to any email. Ask the person to send email to you as plain text only, not HTML.

The word gibberish is a noun. It means unintelligible or nonsensical talk or writing.

[Yoshiyuki]

[quote="Meadowlark"]You should still be able to reply to the email you received in the normal manner that you would reply to any email. Ask the person to send email to you as plain text only, not HTML.

The word [i]gibberish[/i] is a noun. It means unintelligible or nonsensical talk or writing.[/quote]

Thank you,meadowlark. You have taught me that the word gibberish is a noun. By the way, what is a verb that tells email has appeared gibberish. And another thing: does the word gibberish imply that particular phenomenon? Does it always imply some kind of 'maltrasnformation' in a letter-writing situation?
Thank you again in advance. Yoshiyuki

[trueblue]

Yoshiyuki:

If you wished to tell someone that the message that you received was gibberish, and use a verb for your description, you could write that the decoding process garbled his/her message.

As for whether it is always used in a writing situation, not necessarily. Someone could also garble verbal instructions or expanations to where you can not comprehend them.

Tom

[Yoshiyuki]

[quote="trueblue"]Yoshiyuki:

If you wished to tell someone that the message that you received was gibberish, and use a verb for your description, you could write that the decoding process [b]garbled[/b] his/her message.

As for whether it is always used in a writing situation, not necessarily. Someone could also garble verbal instructions or expanations to where you can not comprehend them.

Tom[/quote]

Thank you very much for your kind and clear explanation, Tom.

[Meadowlark]

Hello Yoshiyuki,

I'm sorry. I didn't notice your additional question until today. I'm glad Tom was here to help explain gibberish!

Meadowlark

[Yoshiyuki]

Thanks a lot, Meadowlark.