Gotta Get Goin'
Disclaimer: In honor of Chels' plights, I tried adding k's after my c's for this post. At first it was funny, but after a while, it just hurt. I had to retract, but please forgive any lurkers that I did not edit.
The theme from the Adventures of Winnie the Pooh cartoon is looping in my head. Why? I can't honestly say, unless we blame James for singing it every morning for about a week--a month ago. Hence the title of today's post.
More to the point (seeing as I *always* have at least one): I'm here to mini-rant about grammar on the internet. Yes, I know it's been done to death. Today's spin is a little less of a beaten horse corpse.
Nothing, and I do mean nothing in the world of glaring grammar errors drives me as crazy as this defense: omfg, itz teh intrnet u dont have to spel evrything ckorreckt.
Even if I were able to overlook all the painful spelling errors and, God help me, the fact that he/she could have at least typed in an "ly" for my sanity, I'm blown away by this defense. It essentially says to me "if it's not on printed paper, nobody's judging me". Which of course, is crap.
Putting any thought into the situation at all debunks this idea immediately. Why do people learn to spell and write correctly? Because they are being graded on their school papers, and later in life, judged by their words when an in-person representation isn't immediately available--i.e. letters, resumes, etc. By this token, people who acknowledge the need to write properly admit that when their words are being evaluated are also acknowledging they know or at least make the effort to know how to write properly. It's only when their words are posted online that they don't bother.
Ay, here's the rub: the internet is where anything and everything you write has the opportunity to be (and on forums, likely will be) judged as a representation of you by hundreds if not thousands of people. So... now that the audience has drastically expanded, you're not going to cater to the silly restrictions of a language, even if only for the sake of being understood on a basic level.
While I'm also willing to realize that no mater how hard I huff and puff, I can not blow these glass houses down, I need to point out another aspect of the idiocy in place here. The atrocious grammar and equally ludicrous defense of "it's the internet" is not reserved strictly for message boarders who spend hours per night patting themselves on the back for "first post!!1!" and "lolz". I can not count the number of times I have seen it used by people (both male and female) who are determined to make a legitimate point. Yes, it takes a special kind of foolishness to stay in an argument on a message board long, but we've all gotten sucked into at least reading one and thinking along with one vein or the other-or discrediting them all to chime in our own two cents without actually posting. Having the argument I don't particularly fault. It's more the concept that a person intelligent enough to make a cohesive point, who generally has the ability to write intelligently, chooses not to in forums while trying to get other posters to agree with him/her, then jumps down the throat of anybody who dares cry "idiot" based on the horrible spelling and grammar. Seriously. If you're smart enough to debate well, you should have the basic tenet of writing clearly to ensure you're understood locked in, or at least expect to be called out on it.
Finally, I'm going to note that I'm not completely scandalized to loosened spelling/grammar rules everywhere I go. I know that in most forums, editing a post once it's on the board isn't an option for non-admins, and the occasional error is bound to pop up way more than occasionally, particularly if the forum is popular. I've accepted that spelling and grammar aren't all that important to plenty of people--event those who do spare my soul and write tolerably everywhere they go. I've learned to overlook small errors, or even major spelling maladies when there's a "sory, i'm a terribal speller" tacked on at the end. I've come to accept that in text messaging or im, a poor man's shorthand is more expedient, and I've even (good lord) embraced the all-lowercase way of life on more than one facebook occasion (though I can never leave out basic punctuation).
Still I beg of anybody out there, if you're going to rite liek th1s, and you absolutely insist on having awful grammar, to first of all never pick a forum fight with me. Secondly, if you really can't resist, then don't be surprised when I call you a n00b; just because we're online doesn't mean I can't try to bitch slap some basic English into your head. If anything, it encourages me--just in case anybody out there reading isn't going to see my resume, poetry, or the paper I wrote for class.
The theme from the Adventures of Winnie the Pooh cartoon is looping in my head. Why? I can't honestly say, unless we blame James for singing it every morning for about a week--a month ago. Hence the title of today's post.
More to the point (seeing as I *always* have at least one): I'm here to mini-rant about grammar on the internet. Yes, I know it's been done to death. Today's spin is a little less of a beaten horse corpse.
Nothing, and I do mean nothing in the world of glaring grammar errors drives me as crazy as this defense: omfg, itz teh intrnet u dont have to spel evrything ckorreckt.
Even if I were able to overlook all the painful spelling errors and, God help me, the fact that he/she could have at least typed in an "ly" for my sanity, I'm blown away by this defense. It essentially says to me "if it's not on printed paper, nobody's judging me". Which of course, is crap.
Putting any thought into the situation at all debunks this idea immediately. Why do people learn to spell and write correctly? Because they are being graded on their school papers, and later in life, judged by their words when an in-person representation isn't immediately available--i.e. letters, resumes, etc. By this token, people who acknowledge the need to write properly admit that when their words are being evaluated are also acknowledging they know or at least make the effort to know how to write properly. It's only when their words are posted online that they don't bother.
Ay, here's the rub: the internet is where anything and everything you write has the opportunity to be (and on forums, likely will be) judged as a representation of you by hundreds if not thousands of people. So... now that the audience has drastically expanded, you're not going to cater to the silly restrictions of a language, even if only for the sake of being understood on a basic level.
While I'm also willing to realize that no mater how hard I huff and puff, I can not blow these glass houses down, I need to point out another aspect of the idiocy in place here. The atrocious grammar and equally ludicrous defense of "it's the internet" is not reserved strictly for message boarders who spend hours per night patting themselves on the back for "first post!!1!" and "lolz". I can not count the number of times I have seen it used by people (both male and female) who are determined to make a legitimate point. Yes, it takes a special kind of foolishness to stay in an argument on a message board long, but we've all gotten sucked into at least reading one and thinking along with one vein or the other-or discrediting them all to chime in our own two cents without actually posting. Having the argument I don't particularly fault. It's more the concept that a person intelligent enough to make a cohesive point, who generally has the ability to write intelligently, chooses not to in forums while trying to get other posters to agree with him/her, then jumps down the throat of anybody who dares cry "idiot" based on the horrible spelling and grammar. Seriously. If you're smart enough to debate well, you should have the basic tenet of writing clearly to ensure you're understood locked in, or at least expect to be called out on it.
Finally, I'm going to note that I'm not completely scandalized to loosened spelling/grammar rules everywhere I go. I know that in most forums, editing a post once it's on the board isn't an option for non-admins, and the occasional error is bound to pop up way more than occasionally, particularly if the forum is popular. I've accepted that spelling and grammar aren't all that important to plenty of people--event those who do spare my soul and write tolerably everywhere they go. I've learned to overlook small errors, or even major spelling maladies when there's a "sory, i'm a terribal speller" tacked on at the end. I've come to accept that in text messaging or im, a poor man's shorthand is more expedient, and I've even (good lord) embraced the all-lowercase way of life on more than one facebook occasion (though I can never leave out basic punctuation).
Still I beg of anybody out there, if you're going to rite liek th1s, and you absolutely insist on having awful grammar, to first of all never pick a forum fight with me. Secondly, if you really can't resist, then don't be surprised when I call you a n00b; just because we're online doesn't mean I can't try to bitch slap some basic English into your head. If anything, it encourages me--just in case anybody out there reading isn't going to see my resume, poetry, or the paper I wrote for class.