Reading through the forums lately and have been getting rather annoyed at the bad spelling. I know it’s a kinda trivial thing, and I’m no saint and occasionally spell some words incorrectly. I’m talking more of everyday conversational words, and then some that are clearly totally wrong but the person typing them either has no clue, or couldn’t be bothered. Either way I think it’s poor form… It is totally understandable from people whose first language is not English, and in quite a few cases these guys spell better than the guys whose first language is English.
Some example of the correct usage of certain words…
Were = “They were doing something.”
We’re = “We are doing something.”
Their = “It was their car.”
There = “The car is parked over there.”
They’re = “They are doing something.”
Your = “Is that your car?”
You’re = “You are driving badly.”
I have lots of difficulty spelling certain words but I try to check my spelling as best I can.
Sometimes I catch myself typing something like “Their falling off the Empire State building” but I ususaly realize my error before I post.
I think the problem is, for me a least, when you’re typing here, it’s like a coversation and if you aren’t a really good typer you’ll treat it as a verbal conversation and therefor not use correct spelling for some words.
You know, Goats, that as a clause that is perfectly acceptable. In fact, acceptable sentences could begin with each of, “They’re falling…”, “Their falling…”, as well as, “There, falling…”
I have had my bouts of distress at poor spelling, but I have come to accept it as a part of life. Much as I accept the fact that in all the years of buying graham crackers no effort has been made to improve on the crappy wax paper bundles they come in. They inevitably leak crumbs and fail to keep fresh for any length of time any uneaten crackers from that bundle.
I have also come to enjoy trying to decipher some of the worst posts. I delight in those posts so free of capitalization, punctuation, line and paragraph breaks, and correct spelling as to be totally unintelligible. It is truly an art to write in that manner and almost like doing a crossword puzzle to read.
The posts you mention are the ones that really get to me. I’m not at the stage of enjoying them yet, although I suspect given some time I may in a demented weird twisted kinda way.
Not sure if it’s an art, I may just simply term it pure laziness or just absolute apathy which I find rather strange given the fact that most people posting here seem rather passionate about Unicycling in general. But art you say… hhmmmm… I suppose Dali is considered one of the great artists and he is rather twisted
I find it annoying too. I don’t mind typos and misspellings, those are to be expected. But complete disregard for capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc. just makes me think they are lazy and uneducated. I know most probably aren’t uneducated but I just can’t shake that impression.
Change seems to be futile, so JJuggle’s perspective may be our one road to keeping our sanity.
Spell check is fairly easy if your computer has a word processing program on it. Keep a window open with the word processor, just highlight, copy, & paste your post into it, click Spell Check, then copy and paste the corrected version back into your post. Takes about five seconds, less time than falling off the Empire State Building.
Then click Preview Post, proof read, then Submit Reply.
I’m all in favour of proper spelling and grammar but I feel it has gone a bit far when people are more concerned about the correctness of their sentences than the fact that at least one person is right now falling to their deaths.
what r u talked aboot??? i do’nt mind teh speling @ a11…
Seriously though. Bad spelling seems to be like a trend on the Internet, “I’m too lazy to spell correctly and read through my post before posting”. Since I’m used to it I don’t really care. However, I try to spell correctly and not abusing grammar, although I obviously don’t succeed every time. It is a nice way to practice English.
Damn you captainkrunk61 for posting that while I was writing this post. In my opinion the spell check in Firefox is OK for short posts such as this one, and overall it’s a nice web browser. But you should still check your text before posting.
I’m terrible at spelling, punctuation and the syntax of my writing. And I understand how that can be annoying, but I’m always on msn and am used to this sort of writing. I should really practice all of this stuff, because I have english exams soon, and in general these are my weak points.
And if you havent already noticed, I put a lot of effort into writing this post as well as i could.
