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Why is spelling and grammar so poor on this forum?


DaveK

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When i left school i went stright into leather upholstery. The English i learnt at school was totally crap and didnt take it with me. To be honest i think the teachers are to blame sometimes.

 

I've been an upholsterer now for 13 years and the only chance i get to write is on here, i've only been a member for about 16 months and i've learnt more on here than all my school years:D

 

I dont even read that much. I can read perfectly fine:D its just i dont get chance to just sit down and read a book or even the paper:rolleyes:

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Personally, I believe that the spelling and grammar is poor on this forum because we don't pick up enough on eachothers mistakes.

 

What we need to do is highlight any errors with an immediate and scathing response. People will be ashamed and embarassed into improving their posts.

 

Can't see anything going wrong with that plan at all.

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Personally, I believe that the spelling and grammar is poor on this forum because we don't pick up enough on eachothers mistakes.

 

What we need to do is highlight any errors with an immediate and scathing response. People will be ashamed and embarassed into improving their posts.

 

Can't see anything going wrong with that plan at all.

 

 

I thought that was Jake's and Michael's job?! ;)

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Personally, I believe that the spelling and grammar is poor on this forum because we don't pick up enough on eachothers mistakes.

 

What we need to do is highlight any errors with an immediate and scathing response. People will be ashamed and embarassed into improving their posts.

 

Can't see anything going wrong with that plan at all.

 

You missed a space out there A- must try harder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

;)

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Personally, I believe that the spelling and grammar is poor on this forum because we don't pick up enough on eachothers mistakes.

 

What we need to do is highlight any errors with an immediate and scathing response. People will be ashamed and embarassed into improving their posts.

 

Can't see anything going wrong with that plan at all.

 

You missed a space out there A- must try harder

 

;)

 

Also, 'others' should have an apostrophe, and embarrassed has two Rs.

 

'... the spelling and grammar is poor ...' - better without 'the'? Should it be 'are' instead of 'is'?

 

Rob gets a B- for failing to spot all the errors :D

 

Seriously though, as long as the meaning is clear it doesn't really bother me too much even if some people use txt speak. On the other hand, it would be grim if everybody did. Not using punctuation or paragraphs really grates though, and makes posts damn near illegible.

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I was discussing this with somebody at work today - after I mentioned the negative numbers thread, he raised the question of spelling / grammar.

 

This is not a dig at anybody, but I'm genuinely interested in people's opinions. I have never seen such poor literacy on any other forum I've been on. I've been on a number of other car forums (the 964 one, a Mits. Pajero one, a Ford Focus one) and I don't remember seeing the same problem.

 

The average age on this forum is certainly much lower than the 964 forum - and in general, the older people on here do seem to understand punctuation and spelling. I'm not sure what the average age was on the other forums I've been on.

 

Is it basically an indication of our education system these days? Or is it something else?

 

 

Is it that important?

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There are still quite a few professions where a poorly-worded application would go straight in the bin.

I do this (depending on position available). Especially when applying for an IT position and the applicant hasn't even bothered to use a spell checker!! :rolleyes:

 

As for laziness or being tired...well you're only going to write better English if you make a little extra effort. If you do it all the time it becomes second nature.

 

Sadly it appears to becoming a dying art to be able to coherently write structured English. I guess it is "only a forum" though and it's not like you're going to be graded or assessed for promotion based on the gibberish entered on these pages. I've learned to accept it now, although will subtly correct posts if I quote them.

 

Thinking about that, there has of course been rising interest in employers looking for employees (or potentials) activity on the net. If your Face Book profile is full of txt speak and poor English this could have a negative impact.

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Poor spelling or bad grammar doesn't bother me much, as long as what is being written is legible. Text speak however is a bug bear of mine and I find it very annoying as it is just pure laziness, but to criticise someone because they have not put an apostrophe here, a full stop there or remebered the ''i before e'' rule is a bit much. Yes, correct grammar is important in the real world, but on a forum I don't think it's as important.

 

I know I am guilty of poor spelling and grammar at times, and I'm sure i've made a few mistakes in this post, but nobody's perfect (I'm fairly close though:))

 

With the amount of posts in this thread already I'm sure that my views will be an echo of someone else's but I thought I'd post anyway.

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Someone just said that 'no-one is perfect' in a previous post. My good friend that sits across from me in the office did a linguistics degree and spent 4 years teaching English to foreign students.

 

I asked her to read through this topic and she has confirmed that not one of the posts is written 100% grammatically correctly.

 

Based on that I think we should all find something more important to worry about:d

 

She is laughing about the fact that people on car forum are discussing grammar:)

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Is it that important?

 

It depends on your point of view.

 

I find that some of the posts on this forum are almost impossible to read because the spelling is so poor, and the terms "sentence" and "paragraph" seem completely alien to the originator. So yes - sometimes it is.

 

However, the main reason I asked the question was because if it is an indication of how poorly people are educated these days then yes - I do think it's important. A country where most of it's inhabitants can't string a coherent written sentence together is a very poor country indeed. And on this forum in particular, I think it's slightly ironic given the number of anti-immigrant posts we see.

 

What really scares me is posts like CJ's. This is not an attack on his son - but in my opinion you really shouldn't be able to obtain 8 GCSE's and 2 A levels if you cannot manage basic spelling and grammar. Surely they are the basis for everything else at school?

 

I also think it's funny that some people have said "I'm not at work so I can't be bothered to make an effort". There are always going to be words that are tricky to spell but for 99% I wouldn't really expect it to be an effort. If the education system worked, for most people it should be quite natural.

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