Grammar, Please!

I’ve recently noticed an overwhelming amount of posts that contain absolutely no punctuation, and are riddled with spelling errors. Obviously I don’t expect perfectly placed commas, apostrophes, ect. Also, I don’t mean people who live in/are from countries where English isn’t their native language. Unfortunately, every time I’ve checked the profiles of people who do it, they’re always from English speaking countries. Sorry to rant, but come on people, it makes it a chore to read your posts. (And we’re all here to help you with fish issues)

 

I’ve recently noticed an overwhelming amount of posts that contain absolutely no punctuation, and are riddled with spelling errors. Obviously I don’t expect perfectly placed commas, apostrophes, ect. Also, I don’t mean people who live in/are from countries where English isn’t their native language. Unfortunately, every time I’ve checked the profiles of people who do it, they’re always from English speaking countries. Sorry to rant, but come on people, it makes it a chore to read your posts. (And we’re all here to help you with fish issues)

Dyslexia is also a thing. Just sayin’.

 

I Willz trI beter nect time.

 

Dyslexia is also a thing. Just sayin’.

Well obviously I don’t mean that either, I’m just talking about people who are being lazy.

 

TL, DR.

It c0uLD b w0r53. P03pl3 c0uld wr173 1n l33t. Or they b tlkn in dis way.

Yo dey could be jivin' in ebonix Jus' like Orenthawl James. (Ebonics)

 

I don't think its laziness - some people do not "realize" that they are doing anything incorrectly or maybe just not "knowing" or ever learned the correct way to write.
Just because they are from our country does not mean that they are educated or learned correct spelling/grammar. Just sayin'

 

Well obviously I don’t mean that either, I’m just talking about people who are being lazy.

I just bring it up because I’m from a state where the public schools are almost the worst in the 50 states and some aren’t equipped for teaching students with dyslexia or teaching students period so some people just genuinely don’t know any better. Or they’re freakin’ about their fish and trying to type too fast lol. heh, how do you like that run on sentence?

TL, DR.

It c0uLD b w0r53. P03pl3 c0uld wr173 1n l33t. Or they b tlkn in dis way.

Yo dey could be jivin' in ebonix Jus' like Orenthawl James. (Ebonics)

I laughed so hard at this.

 

I do have somewhat of a pet peeve when I do not understand what the writer is trying to convey, I'm just trying to see the other side of the coin. I don't think people purposely try and spell bad or use bad grammar. Many are probably embarrassed about it. Funny thing is, I know plenty of people who are highly educated but have terrible spelling and or grammar.

 

I don't think its laziness - some people do not "realize" that they are doing anything incorrectly or maybe just not "knowing" or ever learned the correct way to write.
Just because they are from our country does not mean that they are educated or learned correct spelling/grammar. Just sayin'

Good point, but I think a lot of the time it is laziness. I guess I can’t be certain though!

I just bring it up because I’m from a state where the public schools are almost the worst in the 50 states and some aren’t equipped for teaching students with dyslexia or teaching students period so some people just genuinely don’t know any better. Or they’re freakin’ about their fish and trying to type too fast lol. heh, how do you like that run on sentence?

I was wondering if you did that on purpose. I’m not going to directly call anyone out though, that wouldn’t be cool. Oh poop, I double posted. *deletes account*

 

Well obviously I don’t mean that either, I’m just talking about people who are being lazy.

The most common mistakes I find on here are comma splices .

I agree with you to an extent. As long as I understand what one writes in a clear manner, I don’t mind too much. Sure, my brows lift a little when I see English speakers use it’s possessively when it should be its, or they’re when it should be their.

What gets riled sometimes are acronyms, but not for myself but on others’ behalf. If a person just joined, then please just spell it out, instead of using shortcuts. It doesn’t take long. I promise.

Edit: Blame the American education system.

 

Another thing is text speak. Please read the rules for posting. There is a large body of people in the world that do not text. I would think that with a topic as important as the lives of your fish that people would speak as clearly as possible.

This is no joke. There are many threads that I will not answer because of these things. I know there are other long time members that are the same way.

 

The most common mistakes I find on here are comma splices .

I agree with you to an extent. As long as I understand what one writes in a clear manner, I don’t mind too much. Sure, my brows lift a little when I see English speakers use it’s possessively when it should be its, or they’re when it should be their.

What gets riled sometimes are acronyms, but not for myself but on others’ behalf. If a person just joined, then please just spell it out, instead of using shortcuts. It doesn’t take long. I promise.

Edit: Blame the American education system.

My biggest pet peeve is the your/you’re mistake.

 

TL, DR.

It c0uLD b w0r53. P03pl3 c0uld wr173 1n l33t. Or they b tlkn in dis way.

Yo dey could be jivin' in ebonix Jus' like Orenthawl James. (Ebonics)

Dude, I’m not reading that!

 

What’s weird though is, as long as the first and last letter of a word are correctly placed, most people can still read it fast. Lol. I’m 22, so I always get text talk, but I understand that there’s a lot of older adults who have no idea what any of it means. Plus, this isn’t texting! Besides, real text talk was when we had the flip phones that you had to press one button up to three times just to get a letter. Saying “u” actually saved time, but now we have keyboards on our phones.

 

Speaking of phones, I think part of the problem is the autocorrect feature on our phones or computers. I can’t even begin to tell you how often my phone/mac will change words into the wrong thing, like it knows better. Example: ‘We’re going to the fish store’ changes to ‘Were going to the fish store.’ How dare you Siri! How DARE you!

 

My autocorrect is turned off for that exact reason!

 

Spellimg doesn't bother me as much as 1 great big block of text. the Tiny little buttons on the keyboard always spell my words wrong.

If I can't understand someones post ill just move on to the next one. Its not something that I really ever worry about.

 

I do have somewhat of a pet peeve when I do not understand what the writer is trying to convey, I'm just trying to see the other side of the coin. I don't think people purposely try and spell bad or use bad grammar. Many are probably embarrassed about it. Funny thing is, I know plenty of people who are highly educated but have terrible spelling and or grammar.

Actually, now that you say that, I’ve noticed even professional writers are the worst at good grammar/spelling/punctuation. That’s why they’ve got editors like AquaticJ who live for that stuff. It’s really quite amusing at times.

 

To put things in to a humorous perspective, I'm embarrassed to say that my math sucks! But, I am great at spelling/grammar. I guess we can't be great at everything!
But, like another person had mentioned about not reading the post and moving on, I find myself not responding to people who write walls and walls of text with no line breaks, commas, etc.

 

this is my first post without any capitalization or proper punctuation
I usually always use grammar when posting, it's what I do.

atl3@st I'm n0t tl3kin lik3 th0s all th3 tim3.

 

Who's this person called grammar I keep hearing about. I can't find a profile.

 

Actually, now that you say that, I’ve noticed even professional writers are the worst at good grammar/spelling/punctuation. That’s why they’ve got editors like AquaticJ who live for that stuff. It’s really quite amusing at times.

It’s funny you say that, I’ve actually edited several of my friends papers. He’s an English major...and sucks at writing. Hahahaha.

 

It’s funny you say that, I’ve actually edited several of my friends papers. He’s an English major...and sucks at writing. Hahahaha.

Ha! Seems like you should make a career out of it! You’d clearly be very good at it.

I’m no English major, but writing is one of my hobbies. Sometimes I care about the grammar when writing for personal projects, and sometimes I just type run-on sentences for days and just leave them there. *gasp*

Haha we’ve all got our strengths. I’m usually a pretty terrible editor. Your friend is probably very grateful haha!

 

Ha! Seems like you should make a career out of it! You’d clearly be very good at it.

I’m no English major, but writing is one of my hobbies. Sometimes I care about the grammar, and sometimes I just type run-on sentences for days and just leave them there. *gasp*

Haha we’ve all got our strengths. I’m usually a pretty terrible editor. Your friend is probably very grateful haha!

He better be grateful! Hahaha. Hey, happy birthday by the way!

 

Every now and then we have to visit this subject.
Important - Wall-O-Text Posts and Run On Sentences

 

There are some special spellers out there. Baffles me too. Alas it is a mere forum and its not really a big deal.
If you’ve ever seen people use voice chat to post text messages on Facebook you’d be blown away, it’s hilarious

 

Man, my spelling is horrible and somehow I manage to be more or less understandable online. I've always been embarrassed by it so I double and triple check with spell check and google (my search history is odd looking). The future really is awesome. You guys have no idea how many hours I spent frustrated and flipping through dictionaries looking for the correct spelling of a word as a child. Things are hard to look up alphabetically when you don't know how something is spelled!

I'm sympathetic to a point, my brain just doesn't do something that it needs to spell either, but online you're judged wholly on how you come across in text. Obvious mistakes will make you look unintelligent and lazy. It's not fair, but it's the only information people have to go on.

 

Man, my spelling is horrible and somehow I manage to be more or less understandable online. I've always been embarrassed by it so I double and triple check with spell check and google (my search history is odd looking). The future really is awesome. You guys have no idea how many hours I spent frustrated and flipping through dictionaries looking for the correct spelling of a word as a child. Things are hard to look up alphabetically when you don't know how something is spelled!

I'm sympathetic to a point, my brain just doesn't do something that it needs to spell either, but online you're judged wholly on how you come across in text. Obvious mistakes will make you look unintelligent and lazy. It's not fair, but it's the only information people have to go on.

This is actually part of the reason I brought up the dyslexia point. Several members of my family and friends struggle with this. Spelling is in no way an appropriate way to guage anyone’s intelligence.

Also, even for those who don’t, sometimes our brains connect the missing pieces of letters or words so we don’t even notice our mistakes anyway.

Really, in some respects it’s an example of how truly marvelous our brains are. They work so quickly, not only are our fingers unable to always keep up, but they repair what we read or see so that it’s understandable before we even realize a word or letter is missing. The only way you notice sometimes is if someone else’s brain waves are out of sync with your own, and they point it out to you.

 

Man, my spelling is horrible and somehow I manage to be more or less understandable online. I've always been embarrassed by it so I double and triple check with spell check and google (my search history is odd looking). The future really is awesome. You guys have no idea how many hours I spent frustrated and flipping through dictionaries looking for the correct spelling of a word as a child. Things are hard to look up alphabetically when you don't know how something is spelled!

I'm sympathetic to a point, my brain just doesn't do something that it needs to spell either, but online you're judged wholly on how you come across in text. Obvious mistakes will make you look unintelligent and lazy. It's not fair, but it's the only information people have to go on.

Using the dictionary (or google search engine) is a good way to learn to spell, as well as broadening one’s vocabulary. I see auto-correct as the improper way. I always have that thing turned off. If I can’t spell a word, I just type how I think it’s spelled, and google will bring me to a few online dictionaries. I think in some ways technology is making people dumber. Most college kids today can’t even do simple calculus problems, like derivatives and antiderivatives without a calculator (ok, bad example). My point is that I wish people would think more often.

 

Thanks to this thread, I finally read the etiquette rules of FL! I had mostly figured them out thanks to moderators and reading others' threads, but good to know!

FYI, you will be able to tell when I'm on my computer versus my phone in terms of my grammar. (Except for first letter captialisation & "I" which I - pun intended - tend to be lazy about in either format.)

WARNING! From now on, I'm unlikely to capitalise "i" and i'm going to miss a few first letters because i'm a rebel. If this triggers your grammar trauma, feel free to stop reading. Alternatively, print out this post, get a red pen and correct it all...trust me, it's therapeutic I know because I do this as part of my job.

On my phone, I use way more abbreviations and the "swipe" function loves to change my words randomly to predictive nonsense. (Just this morning the lovely Mom2some had an autocorrect to "vomit" lolz.) My phone has decided I never mean "filter" but always mean "fitter." "Cycled," for example, defaults to "the F word -ed." That's probably not a random default tbh.

Speaking of "tbh" I actually quite like these abbreviations. I think I decided that they're ok to use over the years of communicating with my step daughter who is now 17. i'm not trying to be "hip," i'm using shorthand. such as btw, idk, pwc, BB, imo, ime, etc.

When i'm on my phone at home, i'm trying to help someone else (or get help from one of you) as quickly as possible so that I can spend time with my family and fish.

Having said all of that, it is completely frustrating to see the blocks of text that you simply can't understand. I am sympathetic to members who have "nitrIte" vs "nitrAte" typos or autocorrect.

I was an English minor at undergrad and my core function in my job is effective communication to certain audiences. Meaning I change up my styles depending on the audience.

And I totally agree about education and things like dyslexia... learning ESL is ridiculously hard because our language is incredibly complex and has almost no consistent rules. But the other factor is young people....

I know many young people are proficient in communication and grammar. but when someone gets on this forum who is 14 or under 20, and they are panicked about their fish dying and they don't understand the cycle, I take deep sympathy (as I've seen most of you do) and just try to work through it.

I guess I used to be way more picky about grammar and punctuation than I am now because it really doesn't matter if the person is communicating effectively. it's when they're not communicating effectively and we get confused that it's frustrating and time consuming.

I for one am happy to try to sift through the block text posts for the next few months on behalf of the legends, moderators and VIPs who have done so for years as long as I think I can help them you legends can sit back and make sure newbies like me steer people in the right direction.

"I like cooking my family and pets." Don't be a psycho - use punctuation. credit: various internet memes

 

Thanks to this thread, I finally read the etiquette rules of FL! I had mostly figured them out thanks to moderators and reading others' threads, but good to know!

FYI, you will be able to tell when I'm on my computer versus my phone in terms of my grammar. (Except for first letter captialisation & "I" which I - pun intended - tend to be lazy about in either format.)

WARNING! From now on, I'm unlikely to capitalise "i" and i'm going to miss a few first letters because i'm a rebel. If this triggers your grammar trauma, feel free to stop reading. Alternatively, print out this post, get a red pen and correct it all...trust me, it's therapeutic I know because I do this as part of my job.

On my phone, I use way more abbreviations and the "swipe" function loves to change my words randomly to predictive nonsense. (Just this morning the lovely Mom2some had an autocorrect to "vomit" lolz.) My phone has decided I never mean "filter" but always mean "fitter." "Cycled," for example, defaults to "the F word -ed." That's probably not a random default tbh.

Speaking of "tbh" I actually quite like these abbreviations. I think I decided that they're ok to use over the years of communicating with my step daughter who is now 17. i'm not trying to be "hip," i'm using shorthand. such as btw, idk, pwc, BB, imo, ime, etc.

When i'm on my phone at home, i'm trying to help someone else (or get help from one of you) as quickly as possible so that I can spend time with my family and fish.

Having said all of that, it is completely frustrating to see the blocks of text that you simply can't understand. I am sympathetic to members who have "nitrIte" vs "nitrAte" typos or autocorrect.

I was an English minor at undergrad and my core function in my job is effective communication to certain audiences. Meaning I change up my styles depending on the audience.

And I totally agree about education and things like dyslexia... learning ESL is ridiculously hard because our language is incredibly complex and has almost no consistent rules. But the other factor is young people....

I know many young people are proficient in communication and grammar. but when someone gets on this forum who is 14 or under 20, and they are panicked about their fish dying and they don't understand the cycle, I take deep sympathy (as I've seen most of you do) and just try to work through it.

I guess I used to be way more picky about grammar and punctuation than I am now because it really doesn't matter if the person is communicating effectively. it's when they're not communicating effectively and we get confused that it's frustrating and time consuming.

I for one am happy to try to sift through the block text posts for the next few months on behalf of the legends, moderators and VIPs who have done so for years as long as I think I can help them you legends can sit back and make sure newbies like me steer people in the right direction.

"I like cooking my family and pets." Don't be a psycho - use punctuation. credit: various internet memes

Haha! Here’s another meme I’ve seen:

Let’s eat grandpa! vs Let’s eat, grandpa!

Commas save lives!

 

Jenoli42 , you win at life! I thoroughly enjoyed reading that. Are you a teacher? Ha, you kind of sound like one of my favorite college professors from a couple years ago!

 

I’ve recently noticed an overwhelming amount of posts that contain absolutely no punctuation, and are riddled with spelling errors. Obviously I don’t expect perfectly placed commas, apostrophes, ect. Also, I don’t mean people who live in/are from countries where English isn’t their native language. Unfortunately, every time I’ve checked the profiles of people who do it, they’re always from English speaking countries. Sorry to rant, but come on people, it makes it a chore to read your posts. (And we’re all here to help you with fish issues)

Lol it is etc, not ect. please check yourself first! That’s my pet peeve because it is literaly ‘ET C’etera. I do agree that we should all check our writing though.

When I type Betta, It ALWAYS goes to Berta. Ugh.

 

Jenoli42 , you win at life! I thoroughly enjoyed reading that. Are you a teacher? Ha, you kind of sound like one of my favorite college professors from a couple years ago!

LOL! (there's another one! dang it!) What flattery! Thank you

it's not straight-forward to answer your question. yes, teaching is part of my job, but no i'm not a "teacher" by profession - although it was always what I thought I would be growing up. in my history, i've been a peer tutor for several years and a graduate student teacher with 120 undergrad minion...er...students in my responsibility every semester. but I certainly can't claim the title of professor

it is scary how abbreviations become second nature - re-reading my post I saw "FYI." I hadn't even noticed it was there or that it served as punny as I wrote it. smh (there I go again). one of my personal favourite modern abbreviations is double F followed by S. I find myself using it often...

...in fact, i've nearly started replying to threads with those 3 letters only to remind myself about the forum rules.

 

Using the dictionary (or google search engine) is a good way to learn to spell, as well as broadening one’s vocabulary. I see auto-correct as the improper way. I always have that thing turned off. If I can’t spell a word, I just type how I think it’s spelled, and google will bring me to a few online dictionaries. I think in some ways technology is making people dumber. Most college kids today can’t even do simple calculus problems, like derivatives and antiderivatives without a calculator (ok, bad example). My point is that I wish people would think more often.

Trust me my friend, if I was capable of learning to spell I would have. I spent more time studying for spelling tests in elementary and middle school than everything else I studied in school combined. My brain just doesn't do that. It's easy to say that things like spell check keeps people from learning on their own, but without it I would be nearly unintelligible.

 

Plus, this isn’t texting! Besides, real text talk was when we had the flip phones that you had to press one button up to three times just to get a letter

I still have my original flip phone from when I turned 55, 4.99$ frm. Dollar store.

 

Lol it is etc, not ect. please check yourself first! That’s my pet peeve because it is literaly ‘ET C’etera. I do agree that we should all check our writing though.

When I type Betta, It ALWAYS goes to Berta. Ugh.

Good catch, I didn’t mean to do that, just didn’t catch that one when I reread it. I took Latin too, my professor would be so mad at me right now. Lol.

 

this is my first post without any capitalization or proper punctuation
I usually always use grammar when posting, it's what I do.

atl3@st I'm n0t tl3kin lik3 th0s all th3 tim3.

I have an overwhelming urge to point out that you still used punctuation. Three times actually, lol.

On the note of punctuation, I find that leaving the last sentence punctuation free can make everything seem more friendly. I also have a love-hate relationship with commas; I love to use them, and they usually hate where I put them lol

 

I have an overwhelming urge to point out that you still used punctuation. Three times actually, lol.

On the note of punctuation, I find that leaving the last sentence punctuation free can make everything seem more friendly. I also have a love-hate relationship with commas; I love to use them, and they usually hate where I put them lol

I have a bad habit of using commas where I would pause if I was speaking out-loud, which is not really what they're for! I have to go back and de-comma most of what I write.

 

I have an overwhelming urge to point out that you still used punctuation. Three times actually, lol.

On the note of punctuation, I find that leaving the last sentence punctuation free can make everything seem more friendly. I also have a love-hate relationship with commas; I love to use them, and they usually hate where I put them lol

The commas hate you? I just want to be sure .