[:deadhorse:] of the day: English Nazism 101Follow

Equally frustrating is the trend to short, choppy paragraphs. It's as though people are afraid to string together more than one sentence for fear of creating a wall of text. There is nothing wrong with a longer paragraph provided the author sticks to the general convention of dealing with one thought or topic within it.

Great post.

The spelling is British so I'm guessing a Commonwealth country. Perhaps Canada (yeah, go Habs).

It's even worse when you are a student or teen that DOESN'T use text talk, I used to, and I hate myself for it. But back to the OP, the young adults (and I use the word adults lightly) my age are rather thickheaded, or perhaps just lazy. Point being is that those of us who don't use that speech are still caught in the stereotype and criticized for it.
Edit: Spacing, I suppose because this is a post on correct grammar I think I should make sure mine is correct.

Edited, Sep 3rd 2008 9:03pm by Imsortahyper

i cnt beleef u tlking bout meh.. i mena u cn reed it write?

Much love to you for this, Wondy.

Just tell me where to send the hookers.

Life may indeed be short(unless you plan to be immortal like me, but that's a post for another day). However, the workday...she is long. Far too long. Filled with much free time.

Besides, dealing with people who have awful grammatical skills makes things easier for the international visitors here. I mean, think about it. English is a hard enough language to learn and understand when it's written properly. When someone breaks those rules all willy-nilly, then you find yourself with a near indecipherable mess.

Freedom to expect posts that aren't painful to read isn't free. It must be regularly renewed with the blood, sweat and toil of those who cherish it. These occasional posts do a great service to the community, in my opinion.

"Why then do people insist that they should be allowed to become sloppy and slovenly because it's an internet forum, and then complain when the community tells them that their post is unacceptable? "

I agree with your post. I need to correct a few mistakes you made. You use many, "filler," words. For example, the above listed sentence. You say, "Why then do people insist that they should be allowed..." Stop there. It should read, "Why do people insist they should be allowed to become sloppy and slovenly because it's an internet forum?" "Why do they complain when the community tells them their post is unacceptable?" Your post was not grammatically incorrect. It made perfect sense. I felt I needed to correct your post's errors.

Padane has a good point, but it also shows that people have their own pet peeves. For example, I don't feel that the points he (or she) made are errors per se, but can be considered unnecessary. I tend to write in a more "storytelling" style, which means that I tend to put in extra words for 'theatrical effect', if you will. I also disagree with his opinion that it would have been better as two questions. It does make it more concise, and easier to read for some people- but it doesn't flow as well in my opinion.

And I noted something that I would consider an error in Padane's post:


Neither comma was needed in that sentence.

However, I'd like to thank all the opinions in this thread, including those that corrected me and those that disagreed with my point of view. I always like to see a good discussion which doesn't regress into a "NO U!" flamefest.

Edit: For Lauisifer, I don't consider people stupid for making occasional errors, or making the more common ones- I tend to try to overlook them. I can be rather ****-retentive, but realise that is a shortcoming of mine rather than something to be proud of. When I see a post that is well-written and carefully thought out which has "definately" in it, I don't write it off because of that one thing. It's posts like this one which start to bake my noodle. It started well enough with the first line, and has a positive message, but degenerated into a fairly accurate example of the points I made.

Edit#2: Xeqq's post hits almost all of my nerve endings in one sweeping blow.

Edited, Sep 4th 2008 12:12pm by Wondroustremor

I totally agree. I hope my posts don't make your blood boil as I'm not a native speaker. But I see the same things you described on the german forums I read. And it can hurt inside really really bad when you see the language becoming butchered in the many ways that are considered cool or at least acceptable on the internet.

What you're talking about is the gradual evolution of a dialect over generations. What we're talking about is the nearly instantaneous bludgeoning of a language by lazy people who have forgotten why txtspeak evolved in the first place. (It was to make composing a message on a device with 9 keys to produce 26 letters less time consuming...not to provide an escape route for people too lazy to type on a full keyboard).

Minor spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors don't bother me as long as it appears that the person who made them was at least trying to post in a reasonably intelligent fashion.



I had no trouble understanding your post, which is why you wouldn't get any criticism from me for it. My grammar is quite frequently a departure from the "ideal", but it's more than adequate for someone to understand what I'm trying to get across with a minimum of effort. It's when I have to stop, re-read, and/or translate something someone has written and it's obvious it's not an ESL barrier that I get a little tense. If what is important is what a person is saying, then they had best say it in such a way as to not encourage me to pass it up. I'm under no obligation to read what they say. I've got nothing invested in them. I'm not deciphering third-rate language skills from someone who was raised with the language.

Here's the thing...the overwhelming majority of my vocabulary as I speak and as I write, along with my general sentence/paragraph structure, grammar, and punctuation didn't come from language arts/english class. It didn't come from TV or the screen of a cell phone. It came from reading. It came from picking up a book, starting at page one, and progressing through the end. It came from picking up a book, looking up a particular topic, proceeding to that page and reading until the end of the article/chapter/etc. It came from reading articles on the web. It came from reading newspapers and magazines. When a person is exposed to these kinds of things...the kinds of things that have passed across the proverbial desks of editors and proofreaders before they make it into print...they will tend to emulate them when they do their own writing.

Consequently, sadly to say, someone who demonstrates poor written ability is, in essence, demonstrating that they do very little structured reading. They can comprehend the majority of what scrolls up their screen in a chat log. They can read simple instructions. They can function at a minimal level and yes, that is good enough to survive, but c'mon...this is the 21st century and we're beyond simply "getting by". People who don't take the initiative to do their own reading end up being spoon fed the bulk the information they use to make decisions and form opinions. They, despite their best efforts to shun conformity, become pawns. Peons. They sacrifice their individuality for the sake of laziness and apathy because they never develop the mentality that allows them to be a genuine individual. They don't learn objectivity. They don't develop the acumen to sort through conflicting information and arrive at their own intelligently formed conclusions. At best, their opinions and impressions are formed based on knee-jerk reactions to someone else's interpretation of situations and events.

And that is why I can't be bothered to sort through written garbage. Not only is it a chore to read, chances are that upon deciphering it I'll arrive at the end having accomplished nothing. Garbage in = garbage out.

Edited, Sep 4th 2008 9:40am by AureliusSir

For the record, Aurelius, I normally skip your posts because they've got as much waffle and ******** in them as a year 8 student's essay on deconstruction. Ironic, really, seeing as that's what you fear from the unwashed masses. Nevertheless, I more or less agree with you on this one. No one is more shocked than me.

I feel a need to contribute to this discussion, since I'm actually taking a class on this right now, and have had past Sociolinguistic classes that also discussed this issue.

Personally, I am a grammar **** when it comes to myself or other writers, if they ask me to proofread something. I figure that grammar is important not only to avoid looking stupid, but also for clarity of communication.

That said, there are a number of reasons for grammatical, spelling, and pronunciation mistakes. Things like dialect or poor schooling are one issue. Sloppiness is another. And don't forget about learning disabilities. Not only that, but it's only very recently that we've even *had* such a thing as Standard English. Read Shakespeare: you'll see various spellings of the same words throughout. He even made a lot of the same mistakes we still find irritating today. Would anyone argue that Shakespeare was an idiot simply because of his language use? Maybe on other grounds, perhaps, but probably not on that. After all, it was an oral form originally, and there was no standard for writing. Everyone who wrote at that time wrote the way he did, in terms of spelling variation and mistakes.

Finally, the language itself is changing. Just awhile ago, I put a comma before "and" in a list. This is changing. I was taught that you ALWAYS put the comma there. My Russian exchange student was taught that you NEVER put a comma there. In the future, it will probably be wrong to put the comma there. Right now, it is accepted because there are enough people who still put it there.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this issue. Communication is very important, and being clear in your language use is, therefore, important. This means that having a standard is a good thing, since it eliminates ambiguity. However, I also think that language diversity is also fascinating, and that maybe we are too harsh on this issue at times. If you understand what people are saying, does it really matter whether "its/it's" is used perfectly?

It drives me nuts when I see things done incorrectly, but it also drives me nuts if I feel like I don't have enough space. I tend to be a perfectionist, with speaking, writing, driving, etc. and it irritates me when people are sloppy. But I'm not convinced that I *should* be irritated.

This. ._.

This is by far the most annoying one for me. Don't these people ever think about the meaning of what they're saying?