Dave Stohler

Geez, just look at all the misspellings in the title lines!!!

"Waht is cycliing advocacy?"

"Whatsa in front of me is not important!"

"thieft"

Man, **** plaec has gon downhil.......

solo

I resent that remark...my mother and father were married months before I was born!

bennyk

You misspelled "stubborn, self-righteous, and unable to understand others' opinions"

bk

ngateguy

You get what you pay for

womble

Try subtlety next time- you'll get extra points for it.

bennyk

For the record, I think
"Whatsa in front of me is not important!"

is an imitation of Mario, a la, "Itsa me! I'ma gonna win"

chipcom 

Mine weren't, but they were brother and sister for years before I was born, do I get points for that?

tippy

Be careful about nit-picking peoples "faults" on this NG. You will get absolutely no sympathy (speaking from experience). People are not illiterate, they are lazy and if their message is spelled close enough to get the message across then it's OK with them. Typically, the attitude is this, if you try to spell check posters, you are considered "stubborn, self-righteous, and unable to understand others' opinions". Consider yourself lucky enough to recognize words that are misspelled and then let it be. They ain't gonna change for you. Live and let live.

d.tipton

Placid Casual

How, precisely, does one post "on" a "folder"? Don't you mean in this forum, my pedantic friend? Also, according to what definition of literacy is it considered "literate" to end a sentence with two question marks?

Yours in pedantry,
PC

chipcom 

Actually it was a twist from Cannonball Run, I believe "Whatsa behind me, she's not important!", but thanks for playing. Johnny, tell him what prizes he could have won...

dobber

Interesting commentary coming from a cutter who can't even spell his name correctly

solo

Points, no, but perhaps extra toes.

heckflosse

What's Geez mean?

gudel

folder? i guess you answered your own question.

Brian

There's a valid point to be made here. There was a recent thread regarding a newspaper editorial that painted an unkind picture of cyclists. One of the least literate members of the A&S forums contacted the writer by email, expressing his opinions in his own form of woefully poor grammar. Several of us agreed that we could not have chosen a worse spokesperson. The writer dismissed the forum member as a nut-job, partially based on the difficulty of understanding what he was trying to communicate. So let's view this as an opportunity for a constructive dialogue.

We all make tpyos once in a while. Happens to everyone. But how many of us dismiss the comments made by other members when their posts are barely legible? If someone has problems with basic spelling and punctuation, not to mention sentence structure, does this affect how you view their comments?

By the way, that was intentional, ok?

KrisPistofferson

In my opinion, when someone opens their mouth and says something stupid, it's excusable unless it's on a regular basis. It's a different story when one is writing, however, because there is plenty of time to proofread and spellcheck, so really, if your posts look like crap, you're either dumb, lazy or both. Don't mean to sound harsh, and I know a lot of people are like "OMG, punk rawk, I don't give a **** what anybody thinks," but the truth is, if you consistently make childish spelling typoes, people are gonna think it's a child posting them. It doesn't have to look like your doctorate thesis, but it would behoove you to make it look like an adult human wrote it, dig?

Daily Commute

If you're going to criticize style and grammar, you'd better be perfect yourself.

We all make the occasional type-o. We should just accept that as part of the conversational nature of this forum. On the other hand, there have been a few posts so full of mistakes that they were difficult to read. It shows a basic lack of courtesy to post something that's so poorly written that it's nearly impossible to read.

Nicodemus

I'm with you, Dave.


^^And that's why I generally don't make a big deal of it.

People think that because they're giving free advice they don't have to make an effort.
Others are just lazy, and don't want to give language the respect it deserves.
Others seem to think that because "you get the message anyway", it's not important how well it's written.
And yet others will retort to a thread about illiteracy by nitpicking the OP.
"Pedant" is far too easy a label to slap on anyone who complains about lazy, sometimes atrocious grammar and spelling.

I have now gotten to the state where sometimes I see the correct version of something, and I have to re-read because I'm so used to it being wrong that I have to think about it. That's just wrong!

Mind you, Dave, have you ever checked out some of the gaming forums? Now *that's* scary

Nicodemus

Hey, moderator, wherever you are, wouldn't this thread be better moved to General, or Foo?

mirona

Yea, but if you make ONE typo (OMG, should I have made that all caps? What will people think of me?) or grammar mistake, people still jump down your throat. Posters get way too anal when it comes to spelling here.

KrisPistofferson

Yeah, I'll agree with that.

DnvrFox

Hmm!

I believe that should be:

Others seem to think that because "you get the message anyway,"

The point being that we all make mistakes. It took me a long time to not worry about spelling and grammar. Now I concentrate on what the person is trying to communicate, no matter how obfuscated the message may be.

But, I do object to the common spelling mistake, often used by those correcting other's grammar, of stating, "That grammer is wrong," or similar statements. That really gets to me. At least they should know enough to spell grammar correctly, if they are going to criticize someone else's grammar!

ctyler

No, people just can't type.

ItsJustMe

You've stepped into a losing battle. It took me years to learn to ignore bad grammar and spelling.

One problem that I've noticed is that many of the people who are the worst offenders, and who will say "Lighten up, you're just being a pain, you know what I meant!" seem to function a little differently when it comes to language. I think some of us function more aurally, others more literally. When someone has written a piece of text with a misused homonym, or an improperly placed hyphen or something like that, when read aloud it SOUNDS fine. I think some people mentally convert the writing into subvocalized speech as they're reading, and they're "listening" to that rather than directly reading. For them, homonyms and such are not a problem.

I personally read directly, and when I hit a misuse such as that, it's like a train wreck in my thought flow. I think people who do not subvocalize what they're reading generally read faster and perhaps with better understanding (after all, some meaning is lost in the process of vocalizing). But if the prose is not gramatically correct, it can derail your brain. Then you have to stop, back up, re-read the sentence a few times, untangle the grammar, and try to figure out what the writer actually meant. It's really a PITA.

So to the writer, and to people who think like that, it does seem that the complainers are being ridiculous and pedantic, and they probably can't even really understand what the problem is. But to those complaining, there is a real issue; rather than a clear transfer of ideas from one person to another as we're used to, we're presented with a tangled pile of rope with ideas tied to it, and we have to untangle it before really being sure that we understand the original intent.

So I've given up on worrying about it. I think there are two types of people, one thinks literally and expects to receive a carefully crafted piece of communications that unambigously relates the authors intent; the other kind thinks aurally and when they receive written or aural communications, they just toss the ideas into a heap and assume that whatever their brain makes of the heap is probably what the author intended. I have seen a lot of misunderstandings result from the latter thought process. They think they know what the author meant, but I don't think they can ever be sure of it. Nor can another person really be sure of it when reading THEIR writing.

Similarly, some people have used computers and forums such as this as an opportunity to spend minutes or even hours to write thoughtful and edited ideas and responses. But it seems that most people have used the same facilities to slap stuff out practically without thinking about it. I think many posts are made with less thought than a spoken remark at a party.

However, I don't think you'll ever get someone from camp B to join camp A.

I know this seems elitist. Sorry, I'm just presenting my ideas :->

Nicodemus

Nicely presented.