Can't you cut people some slack when it comes to spelling, grammar and punctuation?

[Danny Ocean]

I meant financially! You're up late.

So are you. *gasp*

At night, The Escapist becomes a dark, and brooding place. The nocturnal grammatical and punctuational errors do scurry from their holes for the night. They seek food in the form of 1337 and fail, but they know their place. Come the dawn, the wave of grammar Nazis does come, to banish them back to their pits.

 

[The Iron Ninja]

very poetic. (seriously I mean it)

 

[BardSeed]

I meant financially! You're up late.

So are you. *gasp*

At night, The Escapist becomes a dark, and brooding place. The nocturnal grammatical and punctuational errors do scurry from their holes for the night. They seek food in the form of 1337 and fail, but they know their place. Come the dawn, the wave of grammar Nazis does come, to banish them back to their pits.

That was strange.. You work in a chocolate shop!?
Well, I am nocturnal and daylight is creeping ever closer. This is the time when the language warriors, such as myself, come to rest. I can lay my head down, safe in the knowledge that the grammatical errors have been banished to the wholes from whence they came. I must save my energy for tomorrow I shall be needed once more to fight back the evil hordes of the "1337".
Note to self: Stop pretending that you live in an rpg.

 

[Eyclonus]

I've got an inconsistent quirk with grammar, my first university course was a journalism related thingy that focused on the editor's side of things, so I can usually pick out all kinds of mistakes despite my complete loss of interest in that area. However being lazy I only apply the correct standards when I'm really arguing a point.

 

[Knight Templar]

Depends on the content, if they didn't try then screw 'em.

If they did try and were just rushed then, meh.

 

[The Wooster]

In general conversation I don't mind typos and piss poor grammar and I'm guilty of both myself. In the review section or if you're debating something, clear and concise English is pretty much mandatory if you don't want to sound like an idiot.

As an example. In the gay marriage post Necroswanson used the word fallacy multiple times as it the was the gist of his argument. He made a good case but unfortunately spelled fallacy wrong each and every time, which made his post more funny than thought provoking.

As a rule of thumb, any post longer than 200 words should be spell checked. It doesn't get rid of every little typo but it makes reading posts a lot less aggrivating.

 

[werepossum]

I don't like to see poor grammar, spelling, or punctuation but I think it's the moderators' job to make the call, so I don't mention it unless it's really egregious. I generally try not to correct spelling on a quoted post to avoid the feeling that I'm correcting it. Also, when there are a lot of errors in a post I tend to discount the poster's point(s), so I have to try to remember that the poster might well be a non-native English speaker or severely dyslexic. Also, such things are generally not as important to younger folks (the majority on this and most other forums) as to us old farts. And yes, I love parentheses, except ironically on my calculator which uses RPN.

 

[JayCro]

It gets annoying when ppl talk lyke dis coz dey r 2 lazy or watevz...

I don't care if people make some grammar and spelling mistakes but typing like that doesn't even save time. Is it blatantly spelling wrong to seem cool or something? I don't know.

For some reason it also gets on my nerves if to, too and two are used wrong although not to the extent that I will call someone out on it.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I blame Lynn Truss for the rise in grammar nazis.

And the rotten US English spell checker, colour is a real word.

 

[bassie302]

generally ignoring the minor spelling thingies I'm capable of making myself, I do find that when reading something gets to the average difficulty of deciphering an alien code, I have the right to call someone out for talking complete bollocks. If I'm then pointed at for being dumb and unable to talk how "everyone else talks", I tend to force myself not to correct every single damn line with the idea that someone thick enough will turn around and say either "that's not English" or "you're one of those posh rich kids, are you?" (garbled in their own language ofcourse).

Yes, I've been to places nobody should visit on the internet... and I've amazed myself over mankind's stupidity there more then I like to talk about. Now I need my happy pills again...

 

[Imitation Saccharin]

I judge people based on their spelling, grammar and punctuation.

That's gotta be one of the more fucked up things to take pride in.

Saying "it's not that big a deal" is just encouraging people to never improve their posting. Since this is a forum populated by writers, editors, and contributors, I think it reflects badly on the Escapist community when badly written threads are posted.

Defending the integrity of the English language is like defending the virginity of the town prostitute.

 

[Lord Krunk]

The thing is, the posts that have terrible spelling are often (but not always) pretty dumb anyway. The problem isn't the tiny spelling mistakes, it's the general lack of proof-reading in general in these sorts of posts. It really doesn't take much effort to install a spell-checker onto your browser and give everything a read-over before you post it.

What he said.

The short answer: No.

 

[Singing Gremlin]

I dunno. Some people are more viscous than others with their magic markers, and it's those that spring to attention.

And as for the dyslexia thing, that's an unfortunate side-affect of the growth of the escapist. It used to be that when someone turned up who had dyslexia, they'd point out that that was the case and people would cut them more slack. Now there's too many people to make a note of the ones that spell badly because of medical conditions, laziness or sheer stupidity.

 

[stompy]

Most times, I find Escapist users let things like a couple of spelling/grammatical/punctuation mistakes slide. It's only when the user's whole post is piss-poor, in terms of the aforementioned, that it gets called on for its lack of legibility. Funny enough, I was about to end the sentence on 'on', but remembered that someone got called on it, heh.

I myself tend to ignore posts where the person speaks like the average internet user, simply because it gives me a headache. I find posts without any form of capitalisation, punctuation or grammar not worth my time, and frankly, it's a bloody pain. If I, a terrible speller, on top of one who's barely passing English, can take the time to proof-read my work, write in somewhat comprehensible English and generally put some care into my posts, then so can you.

Oh, and for those complaining about the dictionaries spelling the incorrect American way, there's an alternative. here's [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3099] a British one. Not so hard looking for these two, and I've been using the Australian one since I've joined (which is why my spelling doesn't seem to bad).

 

[[zonking great]]

Oh,come on. There shall be no slack cut when there are people that need desperate saving from the affront of horrible spelling, grammar and punctuation. It is really a small effort to double check your post for mistakes.

But if i talk liek dis, do u still tink im cul? i tink so 2!lololol!

In a case like that, there is no hiding behind dyslexia. (Also, I find that dyslexia is an excuse for being lazy, but that is just my opinion).

 

[Lord Krunk]

I suppose it's okay when SMS-ing (I am grammatically accurate anyway), because it does take a lot of time to type stuff on the keypad.

However, my question is this: Why do it when you have a perfectly functional keyboard?

 

[wilsonscrazybed]

You don't need to be an English major to post here, you just need some common sense. Get a spell-checker. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox have "install and forget" spell-checkers that underline your misspelled words and give you the option to auto-correct them.

For grammar, I haven't seen much correction outside of the User Reviews forum [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/index/326]. The occasional there/their/they're correction comes up, but no one talks about splitting infinitives; or proper use of the semicolon. If you want to improve your grammar, and your ability to communicate through the written word, I suggest reading this [http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html].

For the heroine/heroin discussion, it's a little annoying to be corrected, but there is a way to correct someone without being a dick. (insert dramatic pause) Send them a private mail!

"Hey man, you misspelled heroin. Just letting you know..."

See, now you helped someone and didn't look like a prig doing it.

Also, your required reading for the day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism