Poll: How good is your English compared to your fellow Escapists?

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Abedeus

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Sep 14, 2008
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Seeing how people use "your" instead of "you're" or "there" instead of "they're" or even "their" or in any combination of these words...

Wait, I'm just better.
dijital101 said:
How can the majority be better than average???
Your wrong, my left.

See what I did there? Most of the people that think "I'm good" don't KNOW that they make mistakes. Same as when people with hallucinations don't understand they are hallucinating. They think it's real and we're making fun of them.
 

Twilight_guy

Sight, Sound, and Mind
Nov 24, 2008
7,131
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I'm going to be the standard for bad grammar here. Yeah, for me, I'm the best at being the worst, weee! Behold my atrocious ability to form sentences and tremble! Tremble!

On topic, yeah I have below average grammar. I just never was able to remember all the rules and exceptions and semi-rule exception things.
 

Christemo

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Jan 13, 2009
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even tho im born in a country that doesnt have english as the mother language, i think im ´bove average.
 

ohgodalex

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May 21, 2009
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I'm under the impression that my posts are just above the average level of literacy and eloquence on this particular message board. We Escapists are a pretty intelligent group.
 

furnatic

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Mar 28, 2009
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It all depends on how I'm feeling. Laid back as I am, most would regard me as having bad English, however, I am rather articulate when I want to be.
 

Kinguendo

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Apr 10, 2009
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People who know me know that I like BIG words, people that dont know me know that I like BIG words... in short no, my literacy skills suck... but that isnt what I voted for! XD
 

Zetona

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Dec 20, 2008
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GodsOneMistake said:
Zetona said:
"I am better at English than anyone else on the Escapist, and can prove it by turning this sentence into a palindrome simply by quoting a Fourchan member: 'ebme mnah croufag nitou qyb ylp misemor dnilapa otniec netnessiht gnin rutybti ev orp nacdnat sipacs eehtnoesle enoynan aht hsilg netarett ebmai'" sides reversed is "I am better at English than anyone else on the Escapist, and can prove it by turning this sentence into a palindrome simply by quoting a Fourchan member: 'ebme mnah croufag nitou qyb ylp misemor dnilapa otniec netnessiht gnin rutybti ev orp nacdnat sipacs eehtnoesle enoynan aht hsilg netarett ebmai'".

Beat that, fellow Escapists.

Wait, what? Is repeating the same thing four times and having two of those times being backwards, the definition of a palindrome?
It's certainly palindromic.
 

Zuljiin

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Apr 1, 2009
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Like a few others, I believe I'm better at speaking and writing in English than most I know, though I feel somewhat dwarfed in my linguistics. I chose the option that I'm average compared to my peers on these forums.

I'm also going to pat this place on the back for having the lowest resident populace of silly people. Silly as in stupid.
 

The_Echo

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Mar 18, 2009
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Machines Are Us said:
This is a little odd; as nobody has to actually reply in order to vote, therefore you have no indication of how good a voter really is at writing English.

I would say I am better than average.
If you take out "as," the sentence looks better in regards to punctuation, I would think. You could, however, change the semicolon to a comma and have the same effect.
 

blaze96

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Apr 9, 2008
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Compared to escapists I believe myself to be about median to others on the forum. Compared to classmates and countrymen however, I know myself to be well above average.
 

Zombie_Fish

Opiner of Mottos
Mar 20, 2009
4,584
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My english is about as good as my fellow escapists probably. I'm good at english but not amazing.

Despite this, I'm in the second highest set in my year for english.
 

JemJar

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Feb 17, 2009
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Zamn said:
JemJar said:
"Fellow Escapists" and "Fellow Escapists who vote on this poll" are different sets and therefore a result of "Better Than Average" in your poll is not indicative of incorrect perceptions.
This is actually a good example of bad writing masquerading as good writing. The person who wrote this thinks using lots of big words demonstrates intelligence and writing skill. Good writing involves choosing the best word for a given sentence, not the biggest one. A good writer would rarely if ever use a phrase like "indicative of incorrect perceptions".
Alright, yes, so I was being verbose for the sake of taking the piss a little - though I chose precisely the words I wanted to make my point. The English language is full of very similar words and whilst I'd never claim to be a perfect wielder of our language I tend to be quite wide with my vocabulary. I'd like to think it's a result of having very conversational parents or the quality of my school education but now's not the time for that discussion.

The wink at the end of the final sentence of the OP's first paragraph implies that he/she is expecting to see a skewed vote in favour of "better than average" and sees this as amusing, presumably thinking it would be somehow ironic for the poll to produce a result of the "average" answer being "better than average".

Presumably this is because the OP believes that this result is linked to a large number of respondents incorrectly perceiving or assessing their own spelling and grammar abilities. My point is that this is not necessarily (or even probably) true as the majority of Escapist members will likely not vote on this poll - and in particular those who's spelling and grammar are particularly poor will probably avoid it as they wont be interested by the results.

Correct or not, my perception of the content of the Escapist forums is that the quality of English in the Off-Topic Discussion forum is generally higher than that in Gaming Discussion. Hence I'd expect to see most people in here very legitimately claiming to have a better standard of English than the "average" Escapist poster. It shouldn't be seen as either surprising, amusing or a sign of lying that this appears to be borne out by votes currently submitted (27, 87, 143).

If the question had been: "How good is your English compared to other posters on this thread?" we may have seen something more interesting in terms of investigating how people perceive their own language usage against others.

And for the record: I stand by my use of "indicative" as all polls are until the sample size reaches the population size - the accuracy of the indication improves until all of the population have been checked. Which is why voter turn-out at elections is so concerning - in the previous two UK recent general elections there has been turn-out in the range of 59-61% (if memory serves) which allows the possibility that the a considerable number of people didn't want Labour in power but didn't vote. By contrast, Australia operates on a policy of compulsory voting and sees turnouts in the region of 95%, hence any democratically elected leader can rely on the idea that the vast majority of the population have cast their vote.
 

Hookman

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Jul 2, 2008
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With most people in real life I'm probably better than average but on the Escapist I'd have to say I'm about average.
 

Socken

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Jan 29, 2009
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Considering that English is not my first language and most people here (as far as I know) are from the US or UK, I should probably go for less than average.

So I did.

Although I have frequently been mistaken for an American on some MMOs.