Spelling and Grammar?

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Do any of us care about this any more?

I certainly don't use a spell checker because I take the time to review my posts as I write.

It's beginning to grate a little.

"I could of done so and so"

No people "I could have done so and so"

And don't get me s'tarted on the apos'trophe.

Any thoughts?

J.

 

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At long last, brother - someone else who actually cares (yes, that's right - not *cares*) about proper grammar !!

Time will obviously tell weather this thread whethers the storm of protest from the ignorami who may bleat about whither proper grammar is an anachronism these days...

Juice - I salute thee, Sir

 

Yep, I care... especially when writing (and editing) practice exam content.

Spelling and grammar are particularly important to me when I'm looking through resumes. If you can't be bothered to use proper spelling and grammar, perhaps you lack other "attention-to-detail" skills.

 

I care. Man do I care.

I HATE txtspk, cannot, abide, people, who ca'nt punkchooate or spel propily and REALLY hate people who say that it doesn't matter.

It DOES matter!

Even more annoying than this are the people I encounter every day at work, some of them in very senior roles, who not only can't spell or punctuate correctly, but also cannot construct simple sentences, or write legibly when not typing.

This country is getting more ignorant by the second and, if it keeps going at the current rate, the average IQ of the denizens of these fair isles will be something akin to a root vegetable within fifteen years.

l33t is different - I actually find it mildly amusing from time to time. I would NEVER, however, consider using it in anything other than the arena it is designed for (online bullshitting and messaging).

The best example I can come up with for idiocy is something that happened a couple of years ago. I also frequent a Charlton Athletic messageboard (stop laughing at the back) and there was one poster who regularly posted 'would of' and 'could of' and similar grammatical outrages. His worst ever was when, attempting to ridicule another poster, he posted 'popcorn kettle black' instead of 'the pot calling the kettle black'. ngngnngnhhhhhhh

 

I do try to use proper grammar when posting and I do try to spell words properly. I have to admit though, I do not find it easy. Maybe I should have actually attended school rather than asking my friends to write all those 'Peter is sick today and can't come to school' letters

My hat is well and truly off to the more eloquent and grammatically able members here. I really enjoy reading a well crafted post, especially if the content is interesting and informative.

As a community, I like to think we have an above average amount of members that can communicate well and that they not only have the knowledge but the selflessness to want to freely pass it on to others.

Long live CF!

 

I try to write as good as I can, but not being a native speaker I do make mistakes. There are words I avoid, because I'm not sure how they are spelled correctly.
Oh, Arroryn, that book has been translated into Dutch. It is then called: Zij eten, vuren en beuken. (They eat, shoot and ram).
I have a special problem with jokes. I know a lot of jokes (I collected them for some time and had 12.000+ in my database) but to translate them and still be funny can be very hard.

 

English is a living, growing language - check out anything written in the middle-ages to see how things have changed. Past changes have tended to be provoked accidently through the influence of a variety of foreign languages. But the USA of course, did a major number on the language deliberately. This is why English is such a beautiful and difficult language. It grows and changes. Modern influences we all know and love, so I won't go into them...

Punctuation and Grammar are not fixed constants, nor should they be. Spelling is always up for debate.

Let the war of words commence!

 

I seem to recall a similar thread a year or so ago...

I think we were trying to consider if the language should be allowed to adapt to reflect current useage.

Are we a bunch of dinosaurs trying to hold things back?

If the majority of the 'next genration' are saying tnx to each other, should they be allowed to - if everyone knows what they mean?

I hate it myself, but I do like to put three dots at the end of sentences...

 

I'm a dinosaur as well, i dont care too much for 'txt' speak.

I'd just like to mention though..

you should always rememba that their is a lot of people out there who are peraps a little dyslexic aslo. This is a very unusual and a highly common thing which couldd influence many a good pots.

(Sorry, i couldnt resist)

Dyslexia is most certainly not associated with inteligence but even a mild case can influence spelling, word comprehension and reading.

Seriously, its a point worth making - i think that we are all guilty at some point of being perhaps a little too intolerant, i know that i am - but i do try !

(to be tolerant that is)

 

I'm not having that.

Dyslexia is indeed a very serious thing. I should know - my Mother has a reasonably strong form of dyslexia and has suffered with it all her life - since before it was properly recognised, in fact. I have seen her write what she thinks is a perfectly coherent sentence slightly too quickly, and it has come out in absolute gobbledigook.

There is, however, a massive difference between that and someone who just cannot spell because they couldn't be arsed to learn in school. THAT is what the majority of so-called 'mild dyslexics' are - thick, lazy bastards. I have lost count of the number of people I have encountered in my working life who had degree-level education but who not only could not construct coherent sentences, they couldn't even spell at an 11+ level.

It boggles the mind that an absolute minimum standard for reading and writing is obviously not being established when these people enter university but, I guess, is all part of the stupid touchy-feely "you can be whatever you want to be" mentality that is so prevalent in this country today. A mentality which, I might add, is responsible for the fact that I can't get a plumber to fit my bathroom or a gardener to landscape my garden for a reasonable fee and do a good job on it, whilst there are hundreds of thousands of people on the dole with 'Media' or 'Sociology' or 'English' degrees. What happened to the lower-middle rung of society's ladder being told to learn a trade instead of pissing around at university being 'educated' to do a job nobody needs?

Grrrrrrrrrr....

 

Sorry Zubulebu, i was actually sticking up for dyslexia - my brother and my aunt are quite severe also. I should imagine that a lot of people are going to find that above statement highly offensive, i know that i do.

I find that sentence above absolutely shocking and you have in fact reiterated my first point.

 

OOPS, posted twice - sorry !!

Sorry Zubulebu, i was actually sticking up for dyslexia - my brother and my aunt are quite severe also. I should imagine that a lot of people are going to find that above statement highly offensive, i know that i do.

I find that sentence above absolutely shocking and you have in fact reiterated my first point.

 

Why will people find it shocking? I stated, quite clearly, that I was all too familiar with what dyslexia is, and that, as my Mother suffers from it, I am in a perfect position to comment on what dyslexia is - and what it is not.

It is my experience that I have met dozens of people who claim to be 'mildly dyslexic' but are, in fact, just thick. I'm not sure why that offends you - in fact, I would argue that, like me, you should be more offended by people falsely claiming to suffer from what can be a highly embarrassing condition, especially if you have first hand experience of it yourself. It makes me twitch to think that people are using society's general cluelessness of what dyslexia actually is to gloss over their own ignorance.

Dyslexia is NOT - I repeat NOT an inability to spell correctly. Dyslexics cannot read or write accurately at speed, they often transpose similarly shaped letters (b and d, p and q etc), cannot process phonetic sounds correctly due to low phonemic awareness and have difficulty understanding why others cannot read what they have written down.

All too often in our society we seek to make excuses for the fact that basic education is lacking beyond belief at an infant level. This is often no fault of the teaching profession, as they are expected to teach in ever-increasing class sizes, and made to concentrate merely on standardised testing rather than trying to tease out individual pupils' learning difficulties - although it might be said that far fewer people enter Teaching now as a vocation - they view it as a job and, accordingly, are unlikely to have as vested an interest as they would have done, say thirty years ago. My nephew, who is now ten, couldn't read or write until he was nine. This isn't because he was dyslexic, it's because he was bone idle and would spend all day long in fromt of the Playstation if he could get away with it. As a consequence, his spelling lags behind other children of his age and, unless he knuckles down and rectifies it himself, will probably continue to do so until he reaches adulthood.

Ordinarily, when I make these sort of arguments, I am pretty broad-minded. I am pretty opinionated, so often stay out of the discussions on this board that veer into political, ideological or religious topics because I don't think 'inflicting' my views upon other people is necessarily constructive or appreciated.

On this, however, i will not remain silent. I am sick to death of people making excuses for their own lack of ability, and hiding behind a serious condition like dyslexia makes me sick. If I was dyslexic myself, i'd want to punch people who used dyslexia as an excuse for their own shortcomings - especially since, being dyslexic, I would have had to deal with the ignorance of the general population and derision of work and school colleagues all my life.

To put it another way - imagine how you would feel if you were in a wheelchair due to a physical disability and someone who had a bad knee because they fell off a motorbike when they were drunk put down 'disabled' on their disability monitoring form because they knew they were more likely to get a job interview with a particular firm if they did? it would make a mockery of the 'positive selection' process that is so badly needed to get true equality into the workplace.

As you can see from my post, I feel very strongly about this issue. You should read back through what I posted carefully, and note that I am not saying, at any point, that Dyslexia does not exist - like ADHD - but don't get me started on that
I am simply saying that people who are NOT dyslexic should not say that they are so that they get an easy ride.

 

It's not just spelling and grammar it's everything!
Numeracy, speech even reading the time!

A news paper article stated that today's children can not read time on a analog clock!

WTF I thought, I tested this theory/opinion by asking one of my neighbours kid the time on my analog watch and he couldn't tell the time instaed he showed me what time it was on his mobile phone and said why does he need to learn old stuff when clocks are digital?

I tried to explain in some country's like India if your catching a train you need to know the time and they don't have digital clocks there.

He repiled I'm not bothered

How many of us use a remote to lock our cars or switch channels on a TV? Lazy? Why improve our grammar and spelling when we can use spell check in Word??

 

and it's 'countries', not 'countrys'

 

I fully understand what you are saying but let me explain why i find your concept not just a little offensive, but extremely offensive.

Being around dyslexia makes you recognise it much more than people who are not around it, i'm sure that you will agree.

I recognised the dyslexia trait in a good friend of mine whilst growing up through school, we sat together in many lessons and he would occasionally display the usual things, like reversing letters, spelling phonetically rather than correctly etc. It wasn't really a problem for him but he is what you would term as 'mildly' dyslexic. ( he is a good friend and was best man at my wedding )

I just find it a little offensive that you would regard anyone who could possibly be 'mildy dyslexic' as (in your words) a thick, lazy bastard.

I understand that you are targetting people who 'pretend' to be mildly dyslexic but it does make me curious as to how you alone can tell the difference between genuine dyslexia and 'pretend' dyslexia, such are the subtleties.

I would go further as to point out a further level of learning difficulty, which is in fact a direct result of simply having learning difficulty in the first place. It most certainly can cause great distress and difficulty in learning such things as correct grammar and spelling for example. My friend would quite often get disheartened at school simply because of these difficulties, and would not learn to his full capacity because of it. I am surprised that someone such as yourself would not recognise and have more tolerance with people who have far from perfect grammar - sometimes it is not a direct cause from dyslexia,but a symptom of it which can produce improper language use.

My friend does not write with correct grammar and can still spell phonetically, but i am most certain that he is not think, lazy or a bastard.

That is what i found extremely offensive about your post.



My initial post was actually about tolerance, i hope that this points out why i posted it.

 

pwned.

heeheehee!