but I need to vent.
My father was an English teacher, and while my grammar and spelling are not perfect, it seems the vast majority of persons who contribute to the Internet are completely incapable of producing anything approaching acceptable English writing.
Periodically, I will read the posts on the local newspaper's message board. I'm more of a lurker than a participant these days since I quickly came to the realization that involving myself in petty arguments with some of the more small minded contributors was more than pointless and served only to raise my blood pressure. So now, I simply watch from the sidelines and leave them to their petty bickering.
Today was one of the days I decided to browse through some of the posts on the forum, only to find my eyes bleeding after reading several horribly crafted postings. It's especially painful when I agree with the writer's viewpoint, yet they seem unable to author a single sentence without a half dozen errors.
Many say that image is unimportant, and to some extent, I agree; however, we do make an impression on others by how we speak, and by how we write. If we wish to be taken seriously, we should put some effort into writing legibly. Slovenly writing does not impress.
The Gift of Riding
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Realizations of the Obvious I can get lost inside myself. Preoccupied with
meaningless or sometimes even harmful or pointless preoccupations that cut
me ...
1 week ago
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5 comments:
I got into a debate on-line long ago with someone about the importance of using reasonable grammar and spelling on-line. The other person contended that it made no difference and that only a snob would worry about "how the words looked" as opposed to what they meant.
I replied "Sew, if I wuz a brane surjun riting U 2 ofer my survices, U wood have know problum leting me opurate on U?"
I struggle with grammar and punctuation but at least with spell check for 1/3 of the mistakes I have a fighting chance to get it correct.
Doug
I have always had a pet peeve about the use of the words moot and mute. Some people seem to use them interchangeably. Gets me every time.
I was watching "Judge Judy" a few days ago and one of the litigants uttered the statement "I seen her do it". Judge Judy corrected her, but it took a bit before she realized what she had said was wrong. Funny and sad at the same time.
I think a good part of it is simple laziness. Many people, especially the younger set, seem to have taken grammar lessons from texting on cell phones. And i find it rather ironic that they all seem to carry an arrogance all their own while claiming it "snobbish" to prefer clean text over gibberish.
Jim, have you noticed that the same folks who say, "I seen it," are the very same who say, "You should have saw?" How hard can it be?
I agree w/ scootinfool & all of you on this matter. My own grammar, syntax & spelling could use a lot of improvement too, but it seems like the general level of written & spoken language use has really deteriorated over the years. I'm guilty too of giving less authority to someone's statements when they convey them so poorly, either written or orally. I can even remember when the local press made a big gaff a few years ago. An annoying local habit is the elimination of the words "to be", as in "the scooter needs fixed" as opposed to "the scooter needs to be fixed". But to make that mistake in a HEADLINE, no less, was really bad. The only thing we can do is try to set as good an example as we can, even if it's just fighting a holding action. If not then the level of competency will only detriorate further (not farther - at least got that one right, I hope).
Ben
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