Please type in English!

[Mike]

Please, please, please make your posts in readable English. Making posts in "text speak" or any other abbreviated text type languages just doesn't work on forums where information gathering can be vital to the process of getting answers to your questions.

Most of the time when a member makes a post that is hard to read it just gets passed up. I know it's faster to type that way but it is only good for the writer of the message, not the readers! It takes way too long to decipher what you're trying to say and most of the time people won't take the time to decipher your message. If English is not your primary language, state so at the beginning of the message and folks will be more willing to read the post and work with you.

The bottom line is that you'll get more help if you type in readable English in your posts. Use proper spelling, paragraph breaks, provide as much info as possible, etc when making posts.

Don't forget to use a descriptive TITLE for your threads that you create. Having a descriptive title will increase your chances of getting it read.

Also check out CWC's article on forum etiquette.

Thanks for your help,
Mike

[MagpieTear]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! It drives my crazy(er) when I run across a post that is full of jibberish text speak. Even worse when I interview a talented young candidate for a job, but I am not able hire them because he or she is functionally illiterate.

Another thing to think about is how such a post will effect your perception by others. Many will say "It's only an internet forum, not a professional boardroom" True enough, an occasional misspelling won't hurt. However; clear communication, good spelling and grammar help you get your point across quickly and accurately. It also gives the impression that you are intelligent. Posts full of slaughtered words, obtuse acronyms and abbreviations aren't answered because you sound like a dolt or the reader simply has no clue what you're talking about. Do you want to other forum members to simply pass over all your future posts because they think you are dumb? And with many browsers and forum software packages having a built in spell-checker, there simply is no excuse for common misspellings. (You're on your own for grammar though!)

Perception becomes reality. By accepting misspellings and poor grammar on the internet, we're breeding a whole generation of barely employable workers. Accepting this means that we don't care about our society going down the toilet. How do you want to be perceived?

[MedicBiker]

AMEN! Text speak, capitalization, and punctuation usually make the difference between whether I read a post or skip over it. Thanks for mentioning this!

[Tom]

And don't forget the spaces. lol IagreewithMikeonthisone.(I agree) lol
Tom

[paswed]

If you are a parnet this should make you went to make sure that your kids understand their is a time and place to talk slang I always tell my kids not to talk or says words no one understand

[sirdarksol]

Bump.

Pleasepleaseplease pay attention to this. More and more people are using text speak or just a lot of shorthand. Not everyone here is a big texter, and writing in text speak makes it difficult for them to read.
Further, doing this makes it more likely to accidentally post something offensive. Writing a string of letters that stands for a phrase that contains an offensive word is the same as writing the offensive word, and that's not allowed here.
I've had to remove a few inappropriate phrases of this sort recently.

Like people said above, we don't ask that you have perfect spelling at all times (though, with Firefox, you can come pretty close, as it has an integrated spell-check that will underline anything you've written that it thinks is wrong), but at least make an effort.

I also want to reiterate that we are not talking about people for whom English is a second language, or the younger folks who are still learning the ins and outs of the English language, and if we get periodic reminders that you English is a second language, or that you are still learning the rules of grammar and whatnot, we'll be much more likely to put up with some difficult spots in order to read your posts.

[Devon]

Thanks for this! I agree, it doesn't have to look like a college English finals essay, but really, there have been some posts lately where I could tell there was a problem, but the words were so garbled, I couldn't understand what the problem was, and I had to pass over where I didn't want to.

'Net shorthand is not very coherent to a lot of posters here -- and the older (and often wiser or with more experience and possible insight/helpful advice!) amongst us usually aren't nearly as familiar with it as us young whippersnappers... So you may be "shooting yourself in the foot" so to speak if you write a post in text-speak about a serious or urgent issue!

[Chief_waterchanger]

Yes on the grammar. Please folks, realize that typing in text-speak in a situation where you are trying to get help or converse on a site such as Fishlore makes you look less intelligent.

I am in the "it makes my hair stand on end" club also.

[mathas]

Originally Posted by Chief_waterchanger

Please folks, realize that typing in text-speak in a situation where you are trying to get help or converse on a site such as Fishlore makes you look less intelligent.

Not only that, it makes it much harder to get help when people either can't figure out what you're saying, or don't feel like breaking out a decoder ring and spending 10 minutes to decipher your post.

[sirdarksol]

Absolutely no swears in there.
We've said "underwear" around here before (that's what "knickers" means), and "jackanape" is type of lowland gorilla, and widgets are, well, widgets.

[pepetj]

Well go figure. English is my second language, and for some reason, I've been misspelling more words than usual lately -probably due to being tired or having a 3 weeks flu.

I realize sometimes I misuse some basic grammar issues (e.g. it is not, instead of it isn't), and change words when not sure about the spelling, but I don't mind being corrected, however, It's harder for me to understand the acronyms used in "text-slang" -it took me about 5 seconds to understand the "u r g8" example.

Honestly, I don't mind if someone insults me without me being aware of it, I worry about not insulting others, that's all I can do: hold my horses. But others might not feel as I do, and rightly so.

I remember searching for terms as UGF, HOB, API, MTS, FW when I got into this forum. Finding their meaning is instructive to me and they are part of the language we talk here. Not so the text-slang.

As someone with English as second language, I can say that you have being understanding and quite tolerant with my grammar errors, even corrected some for me (thanks for that).

I am a free thinker and as a rule of thumb I oppose censorship, but we need to protect this site, and I endorse/support the good work the moderators do.

There's too much pollution out there to bring some into this place. We come from different walks of life, but share the same treasure: fishkeeping. Fishlore is home for me. Sometimes I don't even log in, just browse to read what's going on as guest (say I have 5 minutes between patients, or take 5 while working at home). The stories of others fishkeepers, and their fish, end up being my story too.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

[sirdarksol]

Originally Posted by pepetj

I realize sometimes I misuse some basic grammar issues (e.g. it is not, instead of it isn't),

Technically not a misuse. "It is not" is just as acceptable as "it isn't." It is a matter of choice whether to use the contraction or not.

[Butterfly]

Originally Posted by sirdarksol

Absolutely no swears in there.
We've said "underwear" around here before (that's what "knickers" means), and "jackanape" is type of lowland gorilla, and widgets are, well, widgets.

So all that to say, somewhere there is a lowland gorilla throwing it's underwear around while eating widgets ? What's so unusual about that
For those who English is a second(or third) language you all do very well with your posts, it's those who (for whom?) English is a first language and try to shorten it that I say this..... You are not being charged by the word/letter to type so please spell the whole word out. I have a dictionary/thesaurus beside my computer which when I'm unsure I use. It's the ones I'm sure of that get me every time LOL
Ok I think everybody gets the idea
Carol

[Barbrella]

One of my pet peeves are posts that are one huge paragraph with no punctuation. I never bother reading them because they make me dizzy.

Perhaps I'm being very unfair, but seeing things like "EN1 wan2tk2dy?", makes the writer look really dumb and illiterate. I'm sure they're not, but all we have to go by are their written words.

Also, idiotic text-speak makes it very difficult for people like pepetj, whose mother tongue is not English, to understand. Heck, I'm English and can't understand half of it.

By the way, pepetj, your command of English is great! Writing another language is much more difficult than speaking it.

[Butterfly]

Originally Posted by Plecolover12

Even though I am in the U.S. it is very important to speak English. Otherwise people would not read it. You can learn from other people and write it down.

I believe the original post was referring to using text speak and letters to mean words. We have many members whose mother language is not English and we can work with that but deliberately writing so it's hard to understand usually results in the threads not getting much traffic or responses.
Carol

[sirdarksol]

Well said, Butterfly. We have some people who have learned English as a second or third language, and, looking at them now, I can barely recall their first weeks here, when their posts were written in odd (though readable) grammar. We've worked hard to include them and read their posts, and, in turn, they worked hard to continue learning.
On the other hand, people who type in posts like
u r abt2 go ott, ql @ my betta
are undecipherable and can get annoying, particularly to those of us who do not spend any significant portion of our days texting.

[Alessa]

Originally Posted by sirdarksol

Well said, Butterfly. We have some people who have learned English as a second or third language, and, looking at them now, I can barely recall their first weeks here, when their posts were written in odd (though readable) grammar. We've worked hard to include them and read their posts, and, in turn, they worked hard to continue learning.
On the other hand, people who type in posts like
u r abt2 go ott, ql @ my betta
are undecipherable and can get annoying, particularly to those of us who do not spend any significant portion of our days texting.

That is so true. Me, English is my third language and as I have been in college for quite a while (in high school you dont really learn anything about the proper grammar and speech...) I have been lucky enough to learn it and absorb it as my "main" language...

even though I am "young" I really dont enjoy texting, or sending emails or posting in text language, I find it annoying.

I believe that is one of the reasons why FL is such a great site... aside from being friendly, it is also deciphrable!

[Plecolover12]

Originally Posted by Butterfly

I believe the original post was referring to using text speak and letters to mean words. We have many members whose mother language is not English and we can work with that but deliberately writing so it's hard to understand usually results in the threads not getting much traffic or responses.
Carol

Oh! I thought you meant speaking English but saying mean words and stuff, well, I have a personal expierience that you know about. Thank goodness that was over. Bye!

-Plecolover12

[sirdarksol]

I had to be looking at a text-/chat-speak dictionary (aimed at the 'rents, and it's got all of the "parents are watching" warnings that kids might use. Really neat site. Any parents who haven't thought of this and want to know what their kids are texting/chatting about, just search "textspeak," it will turn up a plethora of sites) to write that out.

[BEARjuice]

whats the difference with people using lets say "lol" or "btw" on this forum then people using "LFS" or "CUC". People who don't know what they mean have to go out of their way to find out, same as the people who read "text" and don't get it. We shouldn't have two standards or should we?

[sirdarksol]

LFS, MTS, HOB, etc... are bits of aquarium lingo. Every culture and subculture has some lingo. If you're in the aquarist's hobby, it would behoove you to learn the lingo, even if you don't use it. Folks at fish stores will actually use the term HOB, for example.

On this forum, the textspeak lingo has three things going against it:
First, as a forum, rather than a group of people texting to each other, there's no guarantee that everyone involved even has a text-capable cell phone, let alone does enough texting to have picked up the lingo.
Second, and possibly more importantly, textspeak is so far removed from the English language as to be nearly incomprehensible to someone not in the texting subculture. It's like the difference between French and French-based creole. The creole is based on French, but that doesn't mean that a French speaker can understand the creole.

As has been said periodically through this thread, it's not that things like lol are bad. It's when every other word is represented by a single letter or number. If it's small, isolated bits, most readers can pick up on it by context, or simply by asking. If it's a whole message, however, a lot of people simply can't understand it and don't want to bother.

[Mike]

The main issue was that people were typing entirely in text speak. An abbreviation thrown in every once in awhile isn't the same thing as using "text speak" in an entire post.

I'm looking for something like a plugin or similar for the forum that will recognize fish related abbreviations (like "cuc - clean up crew" or "lfs - local fish store") and make hover links over them with an explanation of what it means. No luck yet though. I'll keep looking for one though.

Mike

[prairielilly]

Is there a sticky somewhere that lists common abbreviations in fishkeeping for new folks? If not it might be a helpful thing to have around. Things like 'wcmm' and 'DG' for example stumped me a bit at first....

[Lucy]

The is by no means complete. You can search the forum for abbreviations and find many. Here's a start:

what abbreviations mean

Edit: SDS

[sirdarksol]

Abbreviations, Initialisms, Acronyms, and other Lingo

Here's the list I just came up with.

I see we already had such a list. Well, I made a new one and I like mine better

[Amanda]

No, people should not have to guess as what someone is trying to say. This is a forum where people come for help & to share their experiences. We don't have time to translate an entire post. Most people won't even answer. It just shows maturity.

[sirdarksol]

Hihi, we speak a common language here at Fishlore. That language is English, not textspeak. Textspeak is not an improvement or advancement of the English language, it is the dialect (one that is nearly incomprehensible to those who have not learned it) of the texting subculture ("The Thumb Tribe" as the Japanese have dubbed it). Fishloreans are not required to be part of the texting subculture, so there is no reason that they should be required to learn a new dialect.

I say, if the texting subculture wants to remain a part of society as a whole, they should strive to not forget the common language that they share with their local culture (be it America, Britain, Japan, whatever). On the forums, you have the space, you've got the full keyboard, and you've got the intelligence to use full words. There is no reason not to.

[fishyuser63]

Originally Posted by mare2009

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

That's pretty cool. At first glance I thought it was nonsense and then I started reading and read through it with no problem.

Sorry if this is off topic, but after reading this thread I need to vent about something that really gets under my skin. I can understand (though I despise) using abbreviations like ppl, gr8, etc to save a fraction of a second while typing. However, something that really bothers me is when I read words like kewl, rawks, and tha. These aren't abbreviations, they aren't shorter than the original word at all. If you aren't saving "precious time" by ommiting letters, why not spell the word correctly? Arrrgh...makes me so angry sometimes. (DEEP BREATH....DEEP BREATH) Ok I'm done now.

[sirdarksol]

Those words are phonetic spellings of the way some people use the words. When I was a kid, "kewl" was in (and the "hip nerds" said it that way).
I sometimes write like that, but generally only when I'm trying to mimic a dialect in my writing.

I get where you're coming from, though. I have the same reaction when people talk in textspeak. It usually takes longer to say out the letters than it does to speak the phrase.

[sirdarksol]

Heck, read the first post, and that's pretty much what it is. There's an "any other abbreviated speech" thrown in there to cover other instances, but Mike aimed it at textspeak.