Are we a nation of poor spellers?

Wot R U so werked up about ?

>>> Do people not realize how uneducated ...

prolly not. or they dont care - or they are non english spanking.

Hope you enjoyed my little blog/reply

I did Poet, I did.....

The thing is some of the non-English speaking writers spell better than the English speaking ones do!

There, I said it. My tirade is over, and I feel much better, thank you.

People are idiots, especially if they use the English language. (Such as myself

I've ranted about the effects of such a lazy society of "l33t" chatters and those too darn stupid or ignorant to do it right.

It shows a total lack of respect in themselves and shows the type of person they are. Corner cutting cookie-cutouts of a lazy society trying to identify itself by being 'cool'..where what cool is, is being a moron.

And to make sure these poor uneducated people understand I am talking to them:
If you dislike what I have to say about your poor typing habits, phuck u.

And you can quote me.

Vive Le Lunaticus!

But Lunaticus... language evolves. What if the constant, pervasive interaction with computers in society actually changes human languange - then it won't be sloppy or uneducated - it will be... "correct". Where do you think OK came from?

I have to admit - I have started saying "prolly" in speech more so than I used to since that is how I most often type it. Ugh.

Man I tell you wot - I'm not holding my breath to see l33t show up in the dictionary.

Just a personal preference...

To those who choose to madly criticize and throw rocks: cheer on for the educated derelicts. While many people with little education at all, but will good attitudes, and positive outlooks, excel and contribute something useful to this world.

Dharmagrl - since you are a teacher, I understand you may actually may be taking some action since you potentially have a very strong influence in the lives of your students. And I'm not arguing that spelling is not important, take a look at the vocaubulary of the average person today, I believe it is less than a fourth of what it was two generations back! The art of conversation no doubt as lacking as less. I just put higher value to how much a man believes in himself than how great his spelling is.

It shows a total lack of respect in themselves and shows the type of person they are. Corner cutting cookie-cutouts of a lazy society trying to identify itself by being 'cool'..where what cool is, is being a moron. And to make sure these poor uneducated people understand I am talking to them:If you dislike what I have to say about your poor typing habits, phuck u.

In fact Lunaticus there are many methods of reading a person. For instance, does he lean to the negative side of a matter or the psoitive? Does he cut another man down when he errs or does he empathetically lift him up? When emotions are high, does he let his tongue loose and speak without first standing in another persons shoes, or does he hold back and first calmly consider a situation?

yes

I'm in agreement with one man

Trinitie

tee speeling dods mitter, btt ntt egn-ail impprtant.

I don't mind if somebody spells poorly, unless they claim to be intelligent.

There are spelling freaks on every forum and THEY irritate me more than mispelled words ( this isn't an exam_its RECreaTION_good, eh, spelled right and effrytink:)
I think you teachers who come onto internet forums and start correcting the spelling errors are also a strange lot. Why does it intrigue you that people mispell? Why does it seem to drive you mad that someone can't spell? Sometime dyslexics can't help the way they spell or people living in foreign parts who have forgotten how to spell in a second language.( dat be me ) Intelligence isn't measured by spelling habits.
Go back to the classroom and use the energy on kids who may actually benefit or care because on the internet if you want to antagonize somebody_start bitching about their spelling.

It's one thing to misspell in a chat, but when you're trying to present a decent argument, misspelling words will only undermine it. Who's going to take somebody seriously when they argue against a topic they can't even spell correctly? Also, although there are individuals here with whom English is a second language, I highly doubt that the majority of the bad spellers fall into that category. I also doubt that they're dyslexic.
It's also funny how some people act as if spelling correctly is some impossible chore. Maybe I'm some type of Super Mortal with an IQ level above three million, but spelling correctly does not take that much effort for me. I do have trouble with some words, such as "their", but I actually have to try to misspell many of the other words commonly used in discussions.
I also do try to ensure that my posts have no errors because it also shows that I care enough to think about what I type. Besides, who in here doesn't ridicule Bush and Quayle for mispronouncing and misspelling simple words?

The point of blogging, chatting, etc. is to COMMUNICATE, and the goal of communication is to be considered and understood, and maybe even agreed with. If people spend too much effort trying to decipher what you're saying, they generally will have less energy to spend on thinking about your actual message. How obnoxious is it to spend time trying to carry on the simplest of conversations with someone who has such a thick accent that you can only make out about 2/3 of his words? Unless you know in advance that he has something really important to say, eventually you're probably going to stop talking with him because it's just too much effort. Bad spelling and poor grammar are the written equivalent of a thick accent.

I teach elementary school children and I spend a lot of time trying to impress on them the importance of good spelling.

I think that it is especially important for people to use good spelling when they're presenting an argument. I usually quit reading any blog once the spelling errors begin to mount. If the blog in question is presenting an argument about a position that I may not necessarily support, I am even quicker to "dump" the article on account of spelling and grammar mistakes.

If I may add one point: run-on sentences, and lack of paragraphs are also serious problems in the blog-verse.

we all have talents in life. These are the things that we're good at without even trying very hard. They're the ones we can make a living at if we use our God-given talent and combine it with hard work.

we all have shortcomings in life. These are the things that we have to work at in order to even break even. The more unnatural something is, the harder you have to work at it.

so go ahead and slam the people that can't spell. It's out there for everyone to see, so why not? But when you start doing something you're not naturally good at, and start screwing it up, make sure you tell those same people that they're allowed to call you some name like 'illiterate' because you're obviously not working at it.

it's all in where your talents lie. For all you non-spellers out there, i'm gonna keep reading your stuff even though i consider myself to be a good speller, and even though i see nearly all of your mistakes... i just choose to overlook them... I read for content... This ain't the New York Times here...

Blog On!

It used to really irritate me... then I realized that they have a God-given right to make a fool out of themselves. So I just chuckle in a "this world's going to h__" kind of way, and move on.

Et leased ai all wais spel rite.

~Dan

I have been wondering the same lately. It seems that half of my peers here at the University of Michigan can't spell worth a damn. Not only that, but they insist on using "words" like 'u' and 'r' for "you" and "are" (respectively). The latter, especially, gets on my nerves. Nothing worse than hearing "How r u 2day?" when someone IMs you (instant-messaging is also another semi-necessary evil); I mean, really, what is that saving? A massive 4 or 5 keystrokes?

Please, take the extra couple milliseconds it takes to spell. Please.

I have been wondering the same lately. It seems that half of my peers here at the University of Michigan can't spell worth a damn. Not only that, but they insist on using "words" like 'u' and 'r' for "you" and "are" (respectively). The latter, especially, gets on my nerves. Nothing worse than hearing "How r u 2day?" when someone IMs you (instant-messaging is also another semi-necessary evil); I mean, really, what is that saving? A massive 4 or 5 keystrokes?

Please, take the extra couple milliseconds it takes to spell. Please.

Did anyone notice that Dharmagirl did not capitalize her "I's" in the last sentence. Just thought I would mention that, being that it is relevant to this topic.

I am a firm believer that pundits throughout history who claim that there are proper ways of speech and spelling which should be preserved are stifiling the creativity of language. I completely agree with poet philosopher: languages evolve. Writing is simply a convention to express the sounds, and the English writing system was developed to express sounds that do not exist anymore. Why have some people started spelling "night" as "nite" (I have seen this in print, not just ironic advertisements)? Because we have no use for the gh anymore. It is simply a matter of getting used to new ways that people think we should spell and weeding out spellings that no longer make sense. I do agree, though, that too much change at once can be confusing.

English has become very convoluted with all of its different manners of representing sounds. Why do we need multiple ways to represent the "ee" sound. We have "ie," "ea," and "ee". It is too much! English speakers are putting in all of this extra brain power trying to keep spellings straight. If we had one spelling convention to represent each sound we would be better off. Of course, there might be instances where certain spellings would confuse, in which case, there would have to be alternates. Language has to naturally work those problems out. Take Spanish, for example. "And" is "y" (ee), but before a word that begins with the "ee" sound, "and" is "e" (ay, as in hay). However, these exceptions are kept to a minimum.

To answer someone's comment about death of conversation, maybe that comes from the arrogance of so called "educated" speakers. We mandate that if someone cannot pronounce or spell properly that he is not worth our time. This authoritarianism of the English speaking elite is quite possibly the reason for this conversational demise (style, on the other hand, is another thing. People's arguments and viewpoints should be made clearly and organized. It just makes everything flow better. I just don't think that spelling and diction are necessarily a part of that).

Let language evolve, but if your personal evolution in spelling confuses people, try to consider the "standard" for now. We will all catch up, eventually.

Andy

i dun no how spellin lyk dis kan be konsiderd evolution.

Also, I guess if it's such a crime to demand that people spell correctly (which is taught in the first grades of schools, which is what makes it even more pathetic not to be able to do), shouldn't we also stop criticizing people for their grammar?  Maybe me want to are typing like this for me are evolutionizing the industry.

Yup, it's arrogance to expect people to know basic grade school stuff.

Messy, evolution has to be understandable. The thing is, we can't know exactly how things will evolve, and we can't know what will be acceptable speech in the future because it takes too long to become fully integrated. Personally, I am not talking about mistakes in spelling and grammar. I am talking about consistent differences between actual speech and writing and the prescriptive "correct" way to do both. The jumbled spelling and garbled grammar that Messy uses to try and prove me wrong is just being ignorant of the way that language actually changes.

If you look at written languages from a diachronic perspective (how they change over time), you will be able to see phonological changes represented in the way the writing changes. Written English has simply not kept up with the phonological changes, and that is why people who have never been exposed to this idea do not feel comfortable with change and have to give outrageous, illogical examples as those in the above comment.

If you still don't believe me, take a linguistics class. I would be more inclined to believe an expert than an elementary school teacher who was force-fed the same garbage that she or he fed you. After all, the duty of exposing new findings in the study of language has been relgated solely to a relatively small group of scientists (yes, linguistics is a science). Unfortunately, people are forced to study the outdated theory that language is set in stone instead of the emerging theories of language as an evolving "creature".

Andy

Let me understand this... When I use bad grammar and spelling, it's wrong, but when others do it, it's correct and anybody who disagrees is closed-minded?

Also, why is my spelling "jumbled"? Why shouldn't night be spelled nyt instead of nite? Why shouldn't like be spelled lyk? Don't being spelled dun would be much easier to say, as it would roll off the tongue with phrases such as "I dunno" rather than "I don'T know". I guess misspelling words is only right if done your way, eh? Any other way is "illogical" and "outrageous". After all, nite's perfectly all right for night, but nyt? !

You still don't understand. Your spelling and grammar examples have not ever appeared in speech or writing. That is what my point ultimately comes to, whether or not something appears naturally. Take a linguistics class.

Ebonics, and AOLspeak. Looks like speech and writing to me.

The human language is the way it is because we agree on it to be so. A chair is a chair because that's what we call it. *Doesn't anyone take speech anymore?*
If I say it is a chair, and you say it's a duck, we have a communication problem.

There is a difference between people who cannot spell and choose not to. Those who cannot aren't so much the problem as those who are reasonably intelligent deliberately ignoring English and doing their own thing because "i'm 2 lazy 2 type it out". Those are precisely the individuals who deserve to have their peckers slammed in the drawer until common sense spontaniously developes and they come to see the error of their ways. (Yes yes, Such an extreme opinion, but I get satisfaction AND my point across with a flair of violence) I stand by what I say, which is more than alot of people who suffer from mild-mannered wisdom do.

One Man, it's one thing to critize another even if they are completely at fault. It is another thing to do something about that insight. Practice what we preach?
I've personally used my insight to educate in a compassionate and uplifting manner.. But my words fall on deaf ears, so to hell with them. I'm not an educator.


COMMON SENSE IS AN UNCOMMON TRAIT: Vive LE LUNATICUS

"In fact Lunaticus there are many methods of reading a person. For instance, does he lean to the negative side of a matter or the psoitive? Does he cut another man down when he errs or does he empathetically lift him up? When emotions are high, does he let his tongue loose and speak without first standing in another persons shoes, or does he hold back and first calmly consider a situation?"

This post isn't about reading people's profiles from their level of cynicism or what they say, but how they say it. You clearly understood my point and knew what message I was conveying, regardless if you disagreed with the fashion statement I was making. I bothered to type everything out, I didn't fall back on my ebonics training. Rather I made sure to put forth the effort. Even if I totally dislike what you say or have zero regard for you as a human being, I had enough respect for myself. I put my best foot foward to be clear and concise. I EVEN "translated" my message into "moronese" so as to communicate better with the masses.

In other words, u go 2 hell..Translation? "My mother sucks goat eggs".