I am not an angry girl
Let us talk about pet peeves. Or rather, let me talk about one pet peeve in particular. Bad grammar, spelling and punctuation seem to come up nine times out of ten on most people’s lists of what irritates them. In many ways I’m glad of this. English is a wonderful, hybrid, thieving and murdering language, and I’m happy to know that there are those out there protecting it, nurturing it and helping it to grow.
But do you want to know what one of my pet peeves is? *Listens to the deafening silence*. People who feel it is acceptable to mock others who find spelling and grammar difficult to comprehend. It really upsets me. If you’ve never had a problem sounding out words to spell them correctly, if grammar is just something that comes to you naturally, then perhaps you simply don’t understand that it doesn’t work like that for a lot of people. But trust me, it’s not refusing to learn, it’s not being lazy, sometimes, for some of us, the English language is very hard work.
I have always, always had problems with my spelling, ever since I was a small child. I had a spelling book up until I was about 15 and finally realised it was doing no good; my vocabulary was growing faster than my ability to write it down. Grammar also - I’ve never been able to remember the rules correctly. Add to this the fact that I have no memory of having a grammar lesson once in high school, and you will begin to understand why this is so frustrating for me. I am a degree level English Literature student, for God’s sake. I love words. I love how they can make a person feel, how they can explain anything, how they can bring people together. I’d give anything to have skill with them. But I don’t. Instead what I get is mocking and ridicule because I can’t make my mind bend that way.
I am not particularly clever. I am lucky enough to have an f-list and, indeed, a life full of people and communities that make me think and give my mind a work out every single day, but rarely can I keep up with the rampant levels of intelligence surrounding me. However, I’m not overwhelmingly stupid either. I have a decent IQ, I can write a fairly debated essay when I need to, and mostly, I can ask and be educated on most topics I’m interested in.
For most of my childhood I put up with teasing because I can’t do simple mathematical sums. I spent half my time flustered and embarrassed because, as someone who was deemed top of her class in many things, my failings were obvious and seemingly ridiculous. Numbers don’t add up correctly in my mind. Words don’t spell themselves out to me. I would have a problem telling you what a noun is. In the past I have studied French for 3 years and Spanish for 2, but I’d struggle to say a sentence in either. Most bizarrely, (and I’d love to know if anyone else does this) when I’m typing fast I often leave words out or substitute the word I wanted to type for one that sounds like it - ‘font’ for ‘want’, ‘feather’ for ‘never’, etc. Some people are tone deaf, some people can’t catch a ball, some people find reading a chore and some people find logging on to a computer unbelievably complicated. Our brains all work in different ways; my brain has a problem with short-term memory and logic.
My point is that this is not something within my control. It’s not something I should have to feel embarrassed about or feel the need to hide. I admit; I get as annoyed as anyone wen ppl typ lik dis 2 u, because for the most part there is no need for it. But sometimes it feels like it’s easier to do that than try and perfect every word I type. And yes, I do have a spell check facility. I’ve used it approximately 30 times just typing out this far on Microsoft Word. But there are problems with spell check. One - LJ spell check is set to American English, which confuses the hell out of me because it constantly corrects words I was sure were right to begin with. Two - For longer entries on my personal LJ I always copy and paste from Word, but it takes a lot of effort to do that for every message board post, every comment left somewhere, and is virtually impossible on msn. It takes all the spontaneity out of conversations. Three - Spell check works with the spelling. It’s not so great with the grammar, and it rarely picks up on my weird substituting thing.
I was searching LJ communities about this and I found several communities about criticising bad grammar and mocking people who hadn’t got it right. I found one, barely updated community that was dedicated to helping people with grammar problems. I do not find it acceptable to scoff at people for this. At its best, it’s plain mean. At its worst, it’s classism, elitism and ignorant. It shows a superiority complex and a lack of empathy with other people. If you live for the English language and adore using it to it’s full potential, I applaud you. But if you just like getting your kicks out of being scornful of people who have less of an education or do not have your logical intelligence level, then you either need to take yourself back to primary school or grow up.
But do you want to know what one of my pet peeves is? *Listens to the deafening silence*. People who feel it is acceptable to mock others who find spelling and grammar difficult to comprehend. It really upsets me. If you’ve never had a problem sounding out words to spell them correctly, if grammar is just something that comes to you naturally, then perhaps you simply don’t understand that it doesn’t work like that for a lot of people. But trust me, it’s not refusing to learn, it’s not being lazy, sometimes, for some of us, the English language is very hard work.
I have always, always had problems with my spelling, ever since I was a small child. I had a spelling book up until I was about 15 and finally realised it was doing no good; my vocabulary was growing faster than my ability to write it down. Grammar also - I’ve never been able to remember the rules correctly. Add to this the fact that I have no memory of having a grammar lesson once in high school, and you will begin to understand why this is so frustrating for me. I am a degree level English Literature student, for God’s sake. I love words. I love how they can make a person feel, how they can explain anything, how they can bring people together. I’d give anything to have skill with them. But I don’t. Instead what I get is mocking and ridicule because I can’t make my mind bend that way.
I am not particularly clever. I am lucky enough to have an f-list and, indeed, a life full of people and communities that make me think and give my mind a work out every single day, but rarely can I keep up with the rampant levels of intelligence surrounding me. However, I’m not overwhelmingly stupid either. I have a decent IQ, I can write a fairly debated essay when I need to, and mostly, I can ask and be educated on most topics I’m interested in.
For most of my childhood I put up with teasing because I can’t do simple mathematical sums. I spent half my time flustered and embarrassed because, as someone who was deemed top of her class in many things, my failings were obvious and seemingly ridiculous. Numbers don’t add up correctly in my mind. Words don’t spell themselves out to me. I would have a problem telling you what a noun is. In the past I have studied French for 3 years and Spanish for 2, but I’d struggle to say a sentence in either. Most bizarrely, (and I’d love to know if anyone else does this) when I’m typing fast I often leave words out or substitute the word I wanted to type for one that sounds like it - ‘font’ for ‘want’, ‘feather’ for ‘never’, etc. Some people are tone deaf, some people can’t catch a ball, some people find reading a chore and some people find logging on to a computer unbelievably complicated. Our brains all work in different ways; my brain has a problem with short-term memory and logic.
My point is that this is not something within my control. It’s not something I should have to feel embarrassed about or feel the need to hide. I admit; I get as annoyed as anyone wen ppl typ lik dis 2 u, because for the most part there is no need for it. But sometimes it feels like it’s easier to do that than try and perfect every word I type. And yes, I do have a spell check facility. I’ve used it approximately 30 times just typing out this far on Microsoft Word. But there are problems with spell check. One - LJ spell check is set to American English, which confuses the hell out of me because it constantly corrects words I was sure were right to begin with. Two - For longer entries on my personal LJ I always copy and paste from Word, but it takes a lot of effort to do that for every message board post, every comment left somewhere, and is virtually impossible on msn. It takes all the spontaneity out of conversations. Three - Spell check works with the spelling. It’s not so great with the grammar, and it rarely picks up on my weird substituting thing.
I was searching LJ communities about this and I found several communities about criticising bad grammar and mocking people who hadn’t got it right. I found one, barely updated community that was dedicated to helping people with grammar problems. I do not find it acceptable to scoff at people for this. At its best, it’s plain mean. At its worst, it’s classism, elitism and ignorant. It shows a superiority complex and a lack of empathy with other people. If you live for the English language and adore using it to it’s full potential, I applaud you. But if you just like getting your kicks out of being scornful of people who have less of an education or do not have your logical intelligence level, then you either need to take yourself back to primary school or grow up.