A Call To Better Spelling

[Feral Cement]

Originally Posted by Pete7

Since CF is a world wide forum, should we give latitude to those who have a first language other than English?

Pete

Absolutely. I have seen several posts where the author asks for leeway, which I think is universally offered in such cases.

John

[hummingway]

Originally Posted by Starbuck

No, please don't correct anything, be it titles or body text.

The body of your text is safe, however, if you don't want your title changed the best aproach is to use "camel case", which is where you capitalize each word (prepositions possibly being the exception) and make it pertinent to your point. Titles are important to net context.

[Feral Cement]

Originally Posted by zeehag

disabilities dictate the typoing skills.

I don't think the OP had persons with disabilities, or non-English speaking participants, in mind.

Originally Posted by zeehag

i can rail on those who have decent typing --- would thAT BE CONSIDERATE OR FAIR????

I guess it would depend on what you were "railing" about.

Originally Posted by zeehag

perhaps the dept of justice would like ot hear abou tthe bigotry against the disabled typo-ists????? mebbe we should form a union as did the farm wrkers???

I think you are over-reaching by a pretty significant distance. The OP wants the mods to correct obvious errors. Personally, I don't want to saddle the mods with that task. I think the posters should read their posts before submitting - that would cut out a lot of the simple mistakes that we ALL make.

Originally Posted by zeehag

many of these souls, including myself, are not able to get this typo-ing thing down perfect.

I don't think anyone is suggesting perfection as a standard. Whenever "perfect" is used in a sentence with MY name, it is usually accompanied by words such as "fool", "idiot", and "example". But I do make an effort to catch my mistakes before I hit "send".

John

[Feral Cement]

Originally Posted by four winds

catty, I hope I'm not grizzling as well. Didn't intend to.

I don't even catch the picky mistakes it's just the huge run on sentence paragraphs that have no cadence or rhythm and go from thought to thought without punctuation chance to catch my breath or can be interpreted to mean three different things depending depending on where I choose to pause based on what I think is trying to be conveyed as it's amazing how that can influence the meaning of what's being said since I don't know the person personally I'm left with an incomplete understanding of where they may be coming from based in my own preconceived notions as it's natural to project ones on beliefs on others with nothing else to go on like a break in the words every once in a while.

If you catch my drift. I just don't want to miss any good info since I'm here to learn. So I actually hate to skip one, but if my head starts hurting I must move on.

+1

I was reading a thread on CF about a very technical issue, and one poster wrote in a "style" similar to your example. Even though I thought the guy had something important to say, I couldn't figure out if he was pro or con on the hardware or if he agreed or disagreed with the protocols for use. I had to ignore his input - in spite of his experience on the subject - because he couldn't be understood.

John

[zeehag]

it takes me about 45 minuets to write and post .....

[Feral Cement]

Originally Posted by Starbuck

Who the hell are you to change my bad spelling, or ungainly usage, or lack of coherence?

You are correct - I have no right to edit your post. Please do this yourself, to the best of your ability, before you hit "Submit Reply".

John

[s/vfootloose]

geez folks, can't we all just get along. Down here we have many who only speak spanish. I always find it funny when people talk to them in english with a poor spanish accent and think they will understand better.

[VirtualVagabond]

Originally Posted by Feral Cement

I can't quite (not "quit") seem (not "seam") to (not "two" OR "too") ever get that one straight myself, but the abuse of there/their/they're is like nails on a chalkboard to me. I understand "it's" as a conjunction of "it is"; what is the rule on the possessive?

John

Strangely, it's its.
Probably the only instance where the apostrophe is not used for the posessive, apart form the obvious cases such as 'your', 'his', 'her' etc. In fact it's because of 'his' and 'her' not having an apostrophe that posessive its doesn't either.

English must be a shocking language to learn.
I had an english master who drummed spelling and grammar into us, and I happen to love language with all it colour and nuances (and I know there shouldn't have been a comma before 'and'), so I also cringe when language is used poorly.
I've had to learn to bite my tongue in the interest of peace and tolerance, sorry guys, it's not 'toleration', so I suffer in silence for the most part.

In fact it can be amusing to see two people misunderstanding each other, purely because they are not able to communicate what they really mean. You (one?) can just see them digging two tunnels that will never meet.

Sadly, it's the failing of our western education systems that got confused and thought that creativity was being sacrificed on the alter of grammatical structure.
They are not mutually exclusive any more than learning multiplication tables would have held Einstein back.

In spite of all that, I find myself agreeing with the sentiments in Starbuck's post!

Beats me. I don't understand it either.

[Feral Cement]

Originally Posted by VirtualVagabond

In fact it can be amusing to see two people misunderstanding each other, purely because they are not able to communicate what they really mean.

Eats shoots and leaves.
Eats, shoots, and leaves.

John

[SaucySailoress]

Aww. I went to bed and you all have a four page conversation on my favourite subject ever....

See, I'm a primary school teacher of English, and I'm having a year out to do my Masters' degree, and I miss correcting books sooooo much; I have to so resist using my mod privileges to go in and capitalise all the sentences I see without. Instead, I make do with titles. I love capitalising titles. I'm finding it so very therapeutic... Thank you very much.

OH. AND A NOTE ABOUT THE CAps lock button>> as yOU KNOW, USE OF ALL CAPITALS IS A BIT LIKE SHOUTING AND IS ANNOYING BOth to the READER AND the poster who prob hit that BUTTON BY mitaek....

So I have taken to FORMATTING SUCH POSTS. It's quite easy (you could do it yourself, perhaps, when you've struck the caps lock by mistake) simply paste into word, and hit the button on the fonts panel that has a capital A and a small a - then select 'sentence case' and it's all done. (As long as there are spaces after the full stops!!)

And yes, I do think spelling and punctuation is fairly important. I agree with many of you, and find myself struggling to plough through posts which are difficult to read, just because I know the poster has something valuable to say.

Target 1: Use Capital Letters for all Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives in Titles!

Target 2: Make titles brief, but descriptive... Think: What is your thread about? What makes your thread different from all the others?

[NDH]

Originally Posted by [LEFT

Starbuck[/LEFT];658511]No, please don't correct anything, be it titles or body text.

As long as it falls within the guidelines for the site, people have a right to have what they create be seen, unaltered. Whatever impression others get, whether good or bad, justified or not, they get.

If you are a bad speller, or a careless typist, or a scrambled thinker, or have some condition that makes interfacing with your keyboard difficult, then that is part of you. It's no business of the moderators to change any of that. And I have a right to know the real person, not some sanitized virtual person.

If I care about your spelling, then I care about your spelling, and if I skip over your post because I find you indecipherable, then I do. Mods, please don't spare me from others' peculiarities, (and in doing so, spare me from my own, honest reactions), by tinkering with people's language. It (

everyone's

language) is too much an intimate part of who they are to allow Speech Control.

If anyone edits anything I create, I'll be very pissed. I'd rather my whole post were deleted than to have it altered in any way whatsoever. Who the hell are you to change my bad spelling, or ungainly usage, or lack of coherence?

We have a fundamental right to be who we actually are, even if what we are is ugly.

Mods have better things to do than to be running around trying to insure equal outcomes to make the CF "fair"; that's the job if misguided governments.

Oh: have a nice day!

Perhaps the moderators should check all posts first and then marks out of ten.........

A league table of all CF members and your league position on your profile................three consecutive posts with mistakes and you have to submit 1000 lines before posting again................

Alternatively we could accept posts with a few mistakes that sometimes come across as quite amusing and all go sailing..................

[Sabbatical II]

OK Doug, I'm the culprit, I'm the one who made the spelling mistake and now I'm humiliated before the world. But consider this, we Aussies started out as humble convicts, none of us with any education. The Poms tried to make us speak the Queen's English and when computers came out the spell checkers wanted us all to spell like the Yanks which differs from our Australian English. I give up, I'll just spell everything finetically. fonnetickly.

Greg

[SaucySailoress]

I give up, I'll just spell everything finetically. fonnetickly.

Stop it, this is just too much. We can make small allowances for bad spelling, but bad accents too???

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by Saucy Sailoress

Aww. I went to bed and you all have a four page conversation on my favourite subject ever....

See, I'm a primary school teacher of English, and I'm having a year out to do my Masters' degree, and I miss correcting books sooooo much; I have to so resist using my mod privileges to go in and capitalise all the sentences I see without. Instead, I make do with titles. I love capitalising titles. I'm finding it so very therapeutic... Thank you very much.

OH. AND A NOTE ABOUT THE CAps lock button>> as yOU KNOW, USE OF ALL CAPITALS IS A BIT LIKE SHOUTING AND IS ANNOYING BOth to the READER AND the poster who prob hit that BUTTON BY mitaek....

So I have taken to FORMATTING SUCH POSTS. It's quite easy (you could do it yourself, perhaps, when you've struck the caps lock by mistake) simply paste into word, and hit the button on the fonts panel that has a capital A and a small a - then select 'sentence case' and it's all done. (As long as there are spaces after the full stops!!)

And yes, I do think spelling and punctuation is fairly important. I agree with many of you, and find myself struggling to plough through posts which are difficult to read, just because I know the poster has something valuable to say. But the style is part of the message that a poster is conveying (intentionally or not) - given that Internetland is non-verbal and non-facial, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't take away another clue as to WTF is going on. CF is dull enough as it is - IMO.

Target 1: Use Capital Letters for all Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives in Titles! - Why Would I Want To Look Like an Illiterate Fool? I can do that anyway within the post content.

Target 2: Make titles brief, but descriptive... Think: What is your thread about? What makes your thread different from all the others?A catchy title is always useful in internetland - but I thought CF had a rule on that? "Be dull".

I think CF trying to control how the English language is used around the world is plain silly. and counterproductive for CF. as well as a waste of your own time.

Don't you have anything better to do, like ironing? If not, I can mail some to you..........

[Woodchuck]

Wouldn't it be "A Call for Better Spelling" since better spelling is not a place. "A call to spell better" might work better.