Say what, Boston Globe?

[negativeview]

I came back to this ad-infested hell-hole to respond to an article recently posted to the Boston Globe. I may be getting old enough to no longer be in "this generation" (which is never defined), but age-ism still bugs me deeply.

The original article, entitled "8 reasons why this is the dumbest generation," is at this location if you are interested

Comments

[trampoline_girl]

As far as the spelling goes, all one has to do is look on the internets for more than forty seconds and see atrocious spelling habits. It actually makes me want to slam my head against the wall until the pain stops. I understand that no one is writing messages for research papers, but seriously, shouldn't we know how to spell regardless of the writing purpose? If English is your native tongue, you should be able to spell the simplest of words. By the time you graduate, it should be second nature. You should also be able to know when to use your and you're. You should know when to use to, two, and too, as well as they're, there, and their. It frightens me to see how bad grammar and spelling have become. Some people that I know that are highly intelligent come across as practically illiterate when they spell. There is no excuse for that.

I say, regardless of who it is sent to, you should know how to spell words in your own language, and it should bother you if you don't.

[negativeview]

As I said, there is a gradient. Writing on the Internet (by that I assume you mean blogs and full websites (which are a gradient all their own) is above instant messenger by far. And when writing about someone needlessly complaining about spelling, it's even higher

[trampoline_girl]

He's probably just tired of seeing blatant typos and mistaken homonyms everywhere he looks online. Goodness knows I am as well. IM doesn't count though, you're right. People respond too quickly and it's private, so checking your spelling is not really as important. But I do think there is a problem with spelling. I didn't read the article, and I'm not decrying the youth of today, but there is a problem. I see it every day. People don't know their own language, and in this country, you really only have to know one.

[negativeview]

There is a certain amount of "don't know," for sure. There's also a certain amount of "don't care, but I do well in English class when I have to care." If you're talking about people that run real websites, I'll back the claim 110%. If you're talking about blogs, then I'm about 50% with you. If you, like the audience, are talking about MySpace, I'll tell you to find different haunts before you start complaining -- it's like complaining that you don't like nudity after you walk into a strip club and take out some singles.

"blatant typos and mistaken homonyms everywhere he looks online"

Where is he looking? I'm once again going to say that I'm out of the ordinary here, but the sites that I frequent are fairly low on the blatant violations of grammar. He names two sites in the entire article: myspace and Wikipedia. He says that Wikipedia is good (regarding grammar and whatnot) but wishes that it had some of the creativity of MySpace.

MySpace.He's complaining about spelling and grammar, while admitting that he hangs out on MySpace, and

[tylergilmore01]

I'll let one go but the others lets see