posted
Oh, I wasn't referring to the occasional typo, but rather posts of the sort used as examples early on in the thread.
Yes, I went through an origami/kirigami phase for a couple years; now, the only thing I can remember how to do is a paper crane. The name, and variations thereof, sort of stuck.
As ketchupqueen said--I did sort of post 'Music' as an intro. There isn't much else about me; I like sketching, writing, reading sci-fi/fantasy, and consuming coffee. Whatever else there is can probably be found out at my art place, http://paperdragoness.deviantart.comPosts: 12 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote: i could go on for days but im not going to. Im just fifteen so if ne one reads this and says to themself "this guy has bad grammer," or "this guy makes no sense," im fifteen and you know what that means.
OK, I'm 15 (on May 16th), and anyone who'se read me knows that even though I have an immense amount of typos and I always get confused and spell "dimention" and "equasion", I can read and write. I punctuate and use apostrophes, I construct arguments and speak with relative coherence.
I'm in Junior High, and not even in an English-speaking country. Basically, all you need is the little effort of pressing "Shift" when needed, reading books to improve your style of language, and putting apostrophes here and there. If you want to show your new anti-apostrophe revolution because you believe they are redundant - while only being an excuse for laziness - at least spell "Im", and don't spell "i'm" occasionally by accident. Be somwhat consistent, and work on it (as I am).
quote: don't worry..as long as u know the basis, ur ok.it's just extra stuff i put sincei ype wut my mind thinks forgetting that i'm typing stuff that may seem absurd...anyway i'im only in junior high. we're not supposed to make sense
You may only b in Junior High, as I am too, but I strive to make sense, and I'd rather be taken for a geejy genius than an incoherent idiot, as the writing might suggest.
quote: Oh, I definitely cut slack to people for whom English is a second language. Enormous amounts of slack actually.
I'm bilingual, so that poses troubl. Either you believe that the languages get cut-down because I put in foreign phrases and such, or you think of me as a more linguistic person, thus being stricter. Of course, this is irrelevant whn my father teaches English, and therefore it gives me no excuse. But I think that I need to take the responsibility for my actions in these cases. It's my language that eventually represents me. You can tell what a person is saying with the vocabulary. If it's extensive and subtle, you can tell by thought. If it's rather shallow and overly-slanged when it should not be, you can also tell something about the person's attitude towards publicity.
quote: There's a big difference between having less-than-perfect grammar and spelling and lapsing into chatroom level language here.
Absolutely! Sid Meier, for instance, sometimes forgets an apostrophe or misplaces a comma - I do that too. I get sometimes 3 or 4 typos a message, and edit it (or not), nothing's wrong with missing something (I just missed an "s" in "missing", so I corrected it). But when you descend to the level of incoherent thoughts you can say something about the message's importance to that person. "You shouldn't ever write precisely in the way you speak", said my father. My English teacher commented that "it's not a very good idea to write the way you speak, because you get a mess of a writing". I agree, and primarily becaues I had good spelling and grammar, but no coherence. I would've written an assignment with correct punctuation and proper paragraphing, and I'd never forget an apostrophy or misspell a word, but the message would make no sense whatsoever. So I improved and ended up the way I am.
quote: You misspelled ass.
"Arse" is the proper way of spelling it! The fact that you, Americans were unabl to know the difference between "arse" (the bum) and "ass" (a donkey) - and thus made "ass" popular in the incorrect sense, does not make "arse" the improper way of spelling it. You Americans amaze me sometimes with your spelling...
quote:
quote: As to the topic, I skip it if it's too painful to read. Self-justification: I just don't give myself the patience to read something that the other person didn't take any patience to write.
I'll second this. There are several posters here whose posts I almost never read because they're just not worth trying to decipher. An occasional misspelling or typo can be distracting, but is no big deal. But when there's no sentence or paragraph structure, punctuation or capitalization, it's not worth it to try to figure out what the poster's trying to say.
And I third this. As one person said on the "The Internet Makes You Stupid" thread: "If someone writes me 'how r u' on IM, it's one thing. But if they write that way on a forum or e-mail I simply reply 'am I not worth a bit of energy to you, that you should write without any pretence of caring about proper spelling, relatively correct grammar and punctuation?', which I believe is the right move."
quote: I'll third it.
Sorry, I fourth the original quote.
quote: No one can seriously tell me that a 15 year-old doesn't know how to use contractions.
"He don't like that girl", if you want to think of it technically. But you're basically right! No one should have the right - especially on a forum, which is the way we communicate here - to slop about. Go to a place where that's the norm, or improve!
quote: It shouldn't be an issue if people just spend a little more time composing their responses.
Our point exactly.
quote: I don't see how using mostly correct grammar would take all that much effort for anyone that reads books regularly.
Books are the key to speaking and writing well. If I hadn't read books, I'd never be able to be accepted here as one of the circle (even if it's the outer one).
quote: If it wasn't worth the time to them, it's not worth the time to me.
Great wording, may I use it in the future?
quote: Age is also never an excuse. I don't care if you're fourteen years old. I was fourteen once myself, and my grammar was just fine, thank you. No one expects you to be able to explain what a gerund is or what the rule is for using "who" and "whom", but the bottom line is that if you're old enough to read our conversations and want to join them, then you're old enough to have a basic grasp of grammar that should let you make posts that are not absolutely impenetrable.
I am 14 and write coherently. I never used my age as an excuse for my writing structure; I barely even used my bi-linguality for that, I only used it to excuse my weird phrases originating in ancient Syriac.
quote: Wouldn't it be embarassing if there was a huge error in this post?
As I once said, even at age 5 I spelled with rough punctuation. If I didn't, I'd look like an idiot! I knew that capitals begin sentences and names, more so - my father (who let me write in his e-mails) knew that I knew.
quote: I'd hate to have anyone think that their lack of mastery of grammar rules disqualified them from taking part as full members of this community.
Only if it's the community of book editors. Since it's not, I second that!
quote: I generally find that the people who are most fussy about grammar rules are usually the very ones who have no idea what they're talking about - the ones who have embraced pinheaded, invented "rules" like not ending sentences with prepositions...
Proof: "Whom would you like to give this book to?"
quote: We tolerate error as long as sense is clear and the intention is communication.
Again, you should never write quite the way you speak. That's not to say that informality is not welcome, but rather that you maintain some form of coherence, and word your clauses in a way that incorporates all the tones, facial expressions and visual elements of the same clause as it would have been said orally in a dialogue.
quote: And yes, I am deliberately using the plural possessive THEIR with the formerly singular but now felt-as-plural "everybody" because it's more convenient and is long established in common usage.
Now, that is proper colloquialism!
quote: I am not so sure about this. I agree that it doesn't need enforcement, to be sure, but I try to encourage good writing skills, and I try to practice them on my own as well.
This isn't the police, but encouraging someon to improve skills gently but poisily (word?) is something that should be done. Delicately, unless noted otherwise, but poisily.
quote: I dont gat whar yuz sain thare, dude.
Drop the comma, drop the full stop.
quote: Annoying Nerd Who Actually Likes English and Math
"Who" needs not be capitalised . Then again, my titles are no better, and when I'm afraid of grammar, I just write in archaic style I know is correct and uncolloquial. (in? non? de? mis? dis? What's the right prefix?)
---
I just reinstalled Windows, so I didn't scan this message with a spell checker (which is what I do with longer messages). Please excuse my typos and mistakes, including grammatical ones and incoherent messages. Yes, I like verbose crap when I'm saying nothing new. But it's been a while since my last long post (Auschwitz and Genocide).
posted
To me it's not about grammar or spelling so much as attempting to be somewhat closer to what we are accustomed to reading in books as opposed to what we see in text messaging on cell phones. Like paragraphs and punctuation and writing the whole word out (even if it's misspelled). It's not a matter of being a nazi about it...it's about seeking clarity in communication. Okay, so for some people it IS about being a nazi. But mostly on Hatrack, I think we're just trying to aim for communication. And as Noemon said, sometimes it's so thick as to be inpenetrable. Attempting to decrease the opacity isn't a bad thing, IMO.
quote: Join with me, and together we can rule the galaxy as Jonathon and Jonathan!
And what is the procedure necessary? I know Hebrew grammar very well, and a bit of Arabic grammar (though we never completed all the "pillars" of the verbe-tenses, as I call them; I know the general concept through my understanding of Semitic grammar I did using Hebrew. Oh, and a bit of 3rd-5th century Babylonian Aramaic too), and a tiny bit of Latin. My English state is known here.
Does that help?
JH
P.S. - "What're you talking about, Jonny?" - "Oh, you know, me and my nonsense - sorry - my nonsense and I."
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Procedure? Well, I guess I teach you all the deep, dark secrets of the English language. At some point you might be inducted into the Secret Fraternal Order of Linguists. World domination will soon follow.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
On the other hand, I enjoy having a community of people with whom I can interact on a high enough level of nerdness to make grammar teasing funny. I don't get that in my everyday life.
posted
I moderate a chat board mostly populated by children ranging from 12 to 17 and a very small number can be bothered with using actual words as opposed to "chat speak". Watching, and talking with them for over a year has taught me many things, some more positive then others (I am notoriously over-fond of "lol"). Most importantly chat speak, slang, and "l33t" can be fun and faster to read and type but they shouldn't be used to the point that you can no longer make yourself understood. I cannot count the number of times I've had to poll other staff members to figure out what someone was trying to say to me. And even on a few occasions had to tell someone that I couldn't understand what he or she was trying to say, and could they ask an older family member to help?
Thankfully those are extreme examples and I generally only have to guess at a word or two from context. Now with that said I must also confess that while generally only in times of frantic scrambling to control the boards or extreme tiredness I have been known to post messages that even I couldn’t read
To sum up that ramble, I LIKE reading posts written with correct grammar and spelling, even if I am not capable of it myself (perfection is something to strive for after all). But I will also overlook almost all errors, as I can probably remember a time where I was guilty myself
This is one of the topics that finally made me register Posts: 29 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I'm not bothered by the type of grammar and spelling mistakes that come with being young or having english as a second language. However, I do find "chatroom speak" to be annoying. In that case, it is not that the person is not capable of speaking correctly, they are simply being lazy (or trying to be "cool"). When you are posting to a message board, you don't have to be grammatically perfect, but you should aim to be understandable.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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posted
I'm not bothered by most online mistakes -- rare indeed is the post I make myself that isn't immediately edited for typo repair -- but I do appreciate an attempt at understandable language.
However, I will point out mistakes that are 1) funny, 2) consistently made, as a helpful (but not carping) gesture, and 3) inaccurate, as in webpage addresses, proper names, etc. I would want my stuff pointed out to me in the same instances, so...
I also notice misspellings and poor grammar much more in heated discussions, especially when the person tripping over the language is presenting a bigoted or irrational position. It makes their argument seem that much easier to dismiss, and sometimes that might mean missing some valid points hidden in the mess.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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