Grammar police.

[TheAnimus]

they except "i am strongly dyslexic, I has retardisim" quite easily.

It depends what your doing, when you've got something as good as Word, it really can fix 99% of the issues i have, but it takes a fair bit of time.

However most people don't need to communicate in written form that often for the daily job do they?

[roorooroo]

Ive never had any trubble wiv bad grammer or anythink like that i aint.

Glad you bought it up though.

[Funkstar]

Right now Iæm sure my typing/spelling on here it terrible, but I'm using PCs and browsers that down have a spell checker. And I'm not going to go copying everything to a OWA email to check it and copy it back.

At home I have Opera configured to use a spell checker which catches most things, but not when I put 'lost' instead of 'list' for example.

I really should read over what I post more too, but well, I'm just lazy

Oh and a Norwegian keyboard doesn't help these damned extra letter keep getting in the way: ø, å and æ.

[bk7]

The term Muphry's Law comes to mind.

Muphry's Law is an adage that states that "if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written".

Not with regards to anything posted here in this topic, but generally when correcting other's words.

[SiM]

other's words.

you mean others'

[TAKTAK]

Exactly - it's got nothing to do with grammar, so why the grammar police are worried I don't know It's just a typo or misspelling

Yeah, but all people that nit-pick are likely to be an active supporter of the grammar police as well..


It's not so much accidental typos, it's more the fact that people continually use brought instead of bought, it is the only mix up of words that annoys me, any other mix up i'm quite happy with, but the sheer amount of people that do get it mixed up...

Sure sometimes it may be accidental, but quite a lot of the time it isn't.

There didn't used to be this amount of dissidence of the English language, it is only in recent years, with the onset of 'chav-ism' and usage of "mert" and "innit" that there has been a steep decline...

[PeterStoba]

My English is the best.

[SiM]

Another one that gets me... A lot of people think "barter" means the same as haggle.

[PeterStoba]

Another one that gets me... A lot of people think "barter" means the same as haggle.

I have actually seen this word used on TV, in which it should have meant haggling... Not very proffesional.

[TheAnimus]

Another one that gets me... A lot of people think "barter" means the same as haggle.

This is an odd thing to pick on.

The barter system has long since ended, do we really need a word for it?

Words naturally change meaning, is it a bad thing?

One of my favourate quotes is about St. Pauls, described as Awful, Amusing and Artifical by the King. These where all positive at the time.

Amusing, inspired by a muse, makes more sense than funny perhaps?

Awful, full of awe.....

Languages change, english has many flaws, words could do with a "hamming distance" to avoid miss understanding.

[SiM]

This is an odd thing to pick on.

The barter system has long since ended, do we really need a word for it?

Words naturally change meaning, is it a bad thing?

One of my favourate quotes is about St. Pauls, described as Awful, Amusing and Artifical by the King. These where all positive at the time.

Amusing, inspired by a muse, makes more sense than funny perhaps?

Awful, full of awe.....

Languages change, english has many flaws, words could do with a "hamming distance" to avoid miss understanding.

All three words have changed their common meanings. By awful she meant awe inspiring or awesome, by artificial she meant it showed great artistry or skill in construction, and amusing was closer in meaning to amazing or fascinating.

I suppose you are correct about the transition of language (another more modern example is gay)... but whilst not common here, bartering still happens in some countries.

[TheAnimus]

Yes but its use is obviously less in the large population that speaks english.

Regretably its more a democorcy. People change the meaning of the word gay to homosexual, it soon becomes an insult too.

its quite natural, my question is why is this bad?

The only reason i can think is sometimes like in the queen's example above,which i thought it was the king (oops, my history is bad), awful, and amusing both make more sense in the older definition to me, as you can see the derivation!

[kalniel]

It is a disgrace IMO.

IMO?

capitals

[CaseyV9]

Name and shame:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=


People post bad English -> Kids read bad English -> Kids start writing/speaking bad English -> Kids grow up -> ... -> Global anarchy

A lot of people can't tell the difference between incorrect and correct English (myself included in some instances). Good luck in ever getting a good job if your English sucks like this.

But there people on this forum like yourself who POST good English. It has not made people like me improve on my English

And as Kalniel pointed out, is pointing out people's lazy English fair when the use of LOL and IMO is used all the time?

[bk7]

you mean others'

HAHA! See what I mean? Muphry's Law in action! You are indeed correct!

[jim]

I'm really picky, but I have no idea why. Grammatical and spelling errors really stick out to me, and become glaringly obvious to the point where I lose the context of what I'm reading.

It's hardly a good thing in daily life, but it does mean I'm fairly good at proofreading which I suppose is a benefit. Generally though, I just try to ignore it, unless the person who made the mistake is foreign, in which case I tend to think correcting them is improving their English and therefore helpful. Most native Brits who can't use grammar or spell don't care, and so I leave it since corrections are more often than not taken as an insult.