Punctuation - my rant.

[AdamAnubis]

I apologise for this in advance, but it is something that has been a gripe for many a week!

Not so much on HeXus, but on various other forums I have been annoyed at the amount of forum posts that, to whoever wrote them, are excluded to punctuation. It's not that they weren't perfectly grammartised, but more that they don't even attempted to put any grammar in them at all. Spelling isn't attempted at either.

which ends up with sntances like ths which continu on and on for sometimes as long as a paragraph without stpping which causes me to keep reading and reading expecting some sort of comma or fullstop or any type of punctuation just so i can stop reading and breathe and i start reading quicker wnting the sentance to be over before i die of lack of oxygen.

and thn whn thy do thy find it ok to leave out occsinal vowls just to be annoying

Argh! It's so annoying. What is so damned difficult about putting a comma in occasionally!

I know how much this sounds like me being a bit of an arse, it's not that people don't use perfect punctuation and spelling, it's that they just don't bother!

Anyone else find this annoying or is it just me?

[SiM]

wat ru tlkn' bout?!?!1!!111?//?

[Stewart]

I think we all get annoyed by the 'LOL u r a sux!!1!!' fools.

So no, you are not alone.

[AdamAnubis]

wat ru tlkn' bout?!?!1!!111?//?

*Screams and runs out in a wild rage*

[Clunk]

I apoligise for this in advance, but it is something that has been a gripe for many a week!

Not so much on HeXus, but on various other forums I have been annoyed at the amount of forum posts that, to whoever wrote them, are excluded to punctuation. It's not that they weren't perfectly grammartised, but more that they don't even attempted to put any grammar in them at all. Spelling isn't attempted at either.

which ends up with sntances like ths which continu on and on for sometimes as long as a paragraph without stpping which causes me to keep reading and reading expecting some sort of comma or fullstop or any type of punctuation just so i can stop reading and breathe and i start reading quicker wnting the sentance to be over before i die of lack of oxygen.

and thn whn thy do thy find it ok to leave out occsinal vowls just to be annoying

Argh! It's so annoying. What is so damned difficult about putting a comma in occasionally!

I know how much this sounds like me being a bit of an arse, it's not that people don't use perfect punctuation and spelling, it's that they just don't bother!

Anyone else find this annoying or is it just me?

Ouch.

[SiM]

I knew someone would look for an unintentional error in that

[AdamAnubis]

I did say that it wasn't that spelling was EXACT. Godammit!

*cries*

[SiM]

I did say that it wasn't that spelling was EXACT. Godammit!

*cries*

Shall I point out some grammatical errors in your post...

[JK Ferret]

Ever since I learned that it's good etiquette to speak proper-like on the nets, I stopped typing in txt speak. Indeed, I've forgotten the whole damn lot, apart from the obvious culprits of LOL, WTF etc.

I constantly mentally edit others' posts to be spelt correctly and properly grammatised, apart from the occasional made up word (of which I suspect I just did...)

I also have some minor form of OCD in that all my posts must be right as far as I can see, to the extent that I will edit up to 5 times within the first minute after posting.

Don't worry about it mate, we is all wanting proper English on the boards, right?

[Whiternoise]

This topic has come up so many times

And yes, it's annoying. What i don't get is that firefox - the browser which the majority of "forum savvy" users use - has a built in spellchecker as far as i'm aware. And yet people still make mistakes even though firefox handily marks your misspelt words with the RED BAR OF SHAME underneath.

As for txt and 1337 speek, it's just stupid. Text speak was invented to maximise the number of words you could fit in a character limited text (still is - although the vast majority of texts are only one "page" long) if i recall correctly. If you can type well, the difference between missing a letter out is basically unnoticeable, and as you're not paying for any of it then why make your spelling abbreviated on purpose.

Grammar, yes it's a stickler for most people. I'm not so bothered by the odd slipped apostrophe - like dont or cant. Commas, again just a slap on the wrist, but most of the time it's not too bad - if it's a serious offence however..

It's the old bugbear of "there" "their" "they're" that gets me every time.

[SiM]

It's the old bugbear of "there" "their" "they're" that gets me every time.

loose/lose - who actually wants loose weight?
your/you're
quite/quiet - quite fan? <- usually a typo though

[Saracen]

Poor spelling doesn't particularly bother me. Or at least, not in a forum context anyway. Partly, that's because the poster might be :-

- dyslexic
- not well-educated
- English not their native tongue
- like me, typing quickly and, often, poorly
- drunk

The same usually applies to poor grammar, and even more, to poor punctuation.

But ..... I do expect people to at least take enough time to try to make a post readable. At a minimum, that means occasional full stops, capital letters and a paragraph break or two.

If people can't even be bothered to do that, then it makes the resulting post so hard to read that I can't be bothered to work at reading it, let alone helping answer any questions.

But beyond basic readability, I'm more interested in what people have to say that how slick they are at saying it.

[Virtual Monkey]

I'm actually pretty amazed by people who write in full-on txt-language, just because I find it so hard to understand. When I get a text like that from one of my chavvier mates it takes me about 10 minutes to read it.

[Saracen]

I'm actually pretty amazed by people who write in full-on txt-language, just because I find it so hard to understand. When I get a text like that from one of my chavvier mates it takes me about 10 minutes to read it.

I have a simple solution to that. I don't do texts, and my mates know it. So, if I get a text, it takes me about 2 seconds to delete it. In fact, I normally only delete it when, every once in a while, I remember to go and do a 'delete all'.

If it's important enough, ring me don't text me. If it's not important enough, it's not worth me reading it. And if someone doesn't know that that's how I do it, they obviously aren't friend or family, so what are they doing sending me a text?

So txt messages, full-on or not, aren't a problem for me as I just delete them unread.

[tigerboyce]

I agree with Saracen, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why people should be excused from having a grammatically perfect response every time, although I don't think posting drunk counts!

I think the main thing to remember here is that forums are generally informal, but either way using the built in spell check along with a basic level of readability isn't hard...

[Hicks12]

I hate txt speaking and very poor spelling. Firefox doesnt spell check my text for some reason(any ideas?) so i have an excuse , im poor with grammar so i tend to have full stops and commas out of place but i do attempt to add them.

Txt language is used for making it quicker to send as far as i know since typing "lol" is quicker than "laugh" or "Laught out loud".