Category: the Rant Board
people, it's called proof reading and here's how you do it.
Before you post a message, hit whatever command your screen reader requires to have what you've typed read aloud to you. If you here an error, for God's sake, correct it. Do some of you even have any idea how to congegate a sentence? For those who speak a foreign language, I'm not talking about yall. I'm talking about the dumb asses who post messages on any site or email that just flat ass don't even make sense because of all the gramatical errors.
As for spelling, I'm pretty forgiving of that because I can't spell for shit. If a word sounds correct, I'm cool with that but when I'm trying to read a sentence that is so full of gramatical errors that it doesn't even make sense, it just drives me nuts!
I'm even ok with run-on sentences and the use of commas like salt and pepper. lol I am by no means gramatically perfect but if I'm going to take the time to type out a message, I'm going to damn well make sure it can be understood.
I've noticed this in the professional world as well and that is honestly frightening. We're completely screwed if this is what our education system is putting out. Oh hell, we're completely screwed by that anyway. lol
Ok, I feel better now.
A fucking men! People need to slow down and at least think about what they're writing before sending it out, especially at work!
Bravo! Bravo!
*Applause*
Hehehe, I'm on a roll today. I'm in a spectactularly bad mood so am taking it out on here. lol
Grumpy grumpy! LOL
I agree completely. I think people just don't take internet communication as seriously as other forms of writing. Sometimes people type the way they talk, but most of the time people don't take the time to properly type. I'd also like to take a moment to address the needless profanity that circulates. Okay, sometimes the F-Bomb might seem appropriate. But it's a word, not a bloody punctuation! It should not replace the comma, the period or the exclamation. It doesn't make people sound intelligent or "edgy" it makes one sound uncreative.
Agreed. Part of the problem is all of the short hand. I can't stand it.
Slang doesn't bother me so much. I'll type gunna just as quickly as I'll type going to if I'm on a recreational board. I don't know, perhaps it makes things feel more conversational? I probably use more profanity than I should but I try to stay away from the F bombs. lol
The short hand can be mildly annoying but as long as I know what it stands for, I'm ok with it on a recreational board. In work emails, that's a whole other story though.
Hey bro, what the fuck yu mean, I pruf red all my stuff.
boB
Today's kids should be made to learn to read and write in Shakespearean English. Lol.
I don't know if I necessarily agree with that considering we simply don't talk like that anymore, but with all the social networking and all that, there isn't as much emphasis on writing anymore, and unfortunately, sometimes that can extend to the professional world.
I can take a bit of shorthand, but like many things, excessive use gets rather annoying.
i suppose it comes to what you write for, and what the purpose of writing. with the technology, with phones, and taplets and pdas and stuff, it is hard enough to write, left alone to prove read it.
i'm not making any excuse, but, at times, if you are out and about, you're not necesarry sitting near the computer, what you want to reply is just, yes, no, or will talk later. you don't have time to rambble on and on.
however, in my view, short hand is no, no, and no. what with this "cuz, bz, b4" and so on, and on, it looks cheep and very unprofessional, and it looks like a 6 year old kid can write better and spell better than that.
With the advance of technology, people become lazy in the way they write, they think, and their behaviour.
Someone should cross-post this onto Facebook and see how many responses you get like hahaha lmfaooo or u r sooo right or any number of letter-number combinations they call textspeak.
Whatever happend to the difference between then and than, your and you're, to and too, the list goes on. And I thought those mistakes were for Facebook only until I saw some of that on a software developers' forum.
And, this is no joke, I got sent a write-up on a custom boot loader which I could not read because it was written all in textspeak.
You all are right, and I am guilty on several counts. This site in particular has both extremes it seems, either really good or really bad writers.
i will only say one thing. short hand needs to go. people need to learn that writing a whole 3 letter word instead of making it into one letter isn't going to take much of your precious time and energy. i am a bit to blame for this as i use italian jaws to read english, but then there's no way 4 sounds like for, 2 like to, u like you etc. it just sounds like someone just started pressing random keys to me. i can't believe the level of laziness
I know that this board was directed at Good God and not me, but I'll try to take the advice anyway.
I almost always proof read as well as spell check whatever I write, whether it's a paper for school, an email or just a text message to a friend. I guess that's why it takes me longer to write a message, but I want to make sure that what I write makes sense and can be understood.
I can't help wondering if this is the same way older generations felt about the way new ones wrote and spoke. It's true we don't speak like we did in Shakespeare's time - for which I'm eternally grateful. But I think the modification of language has been going on far longer than the internet. It used to be you wouldn't even see slang in novels unless it was dialog. Now it's everywhere. Sorry - it is everywhere. The problem now is words are being substituted for mere letters, numbers and even symbols. Language is changing, and it's a little bit scary to think that one day it might be the norm. I'm reminded of the book 1984. In it, there was an entire department dedicated to the removal of certain words in order to vastly simplify the language. New words are being added all the time. WOrds we wouldn't even think were words like "bling". How easy would it be to remove words.
For all that people talk about simplification of language, it seems more words get added than removed from usage. Certainly the familiar second person (thee and thou) from Shakespeare are gone, but I forget the number of thousands of words that have been invented since 1900.
It has to keep pace with technology being invented.
I think what is different is the confusion when you use the incorrect words where the meaning is different, or in the case of the boot loader paper, it was completely illegible to me.
Precision in language is important where precision is important, and kidsqueaks, the phones you lmfao and text upon would be black boxes had someone not been very precise in their design.
Not all places need the same level of precision, in fact, a whole other array of skills is on display for us to see on the Writers' Block board. And those are equally important. because writers like that pique our interest, make us pick up that magazine or read that article we might have otherwise glossed over.
I agree with post sixteen.
I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to this stuff, so I always proofread everything I write. Even when I'm texting, I don't really use too many of the acronyms. Oh I'll say lol or bbl or brb but that's about as far as it goes. When it comes to spelling, I admit it just comes naturally to me, but not everyone is good at it, so I try to be understanding if we're talking about casual written conversation, or what's said on forums. I do think that anything written for a professional purpose should be run through a spell checker though.
I have noticed that we as a people are getting more and more lazy. I'm not the best speller but I try. I try because I take pride in what I write. I guess most people just don't give a shit.
No, they don't. You know, not being able to spell is one thing. It's normal. Some people aren't good at math, some aren't good at spelling. There are a lot of areas people are weak in, and it's not really a flaw. It is a flaw, though, when you can't even be bothered to make something look presentable. Or, worse yet, when you think it's somehow cool to write in an uneducated manner.
Agreed. You can't always judge a person by how they spell, or even by the typeOs they make. But you can learn a lot about a person by how they present themselves in writing.
I follow someone on twitter who has a mac with autocorrect enabled, and constantly types something, misspells a word and doesn't bother to go back and proof read it. It drives me absolutely insane, especially when autocorrect changes it to something entirely different and we have no idea what he's talking about.
Personally, I understand the need for abbreviations when trying to type something quickly, mainly on something like the iPhone or a keypad phone where it's not as easy to type at 80 words a minute. I've been guilty of using LOL, WTF and a couple of other abbreviations, but honestly, substituting letters and numbers for words is unnatural to me. I actually have to concentrate in order to deliberately write like that, which only ever happens when I'm mocking someone else. It doesn't take a herculian effort to proof read something, and write out the word before instead of b4. Or l8r instead of later.
In conclusion... ahh hell, I suck at conclusions. Here, this is my conclusion.
It goes past spelling. People today think it is cool to sound uneducated. "Where you at" is not even funny.
Stole that Youtube for me Facebook and Twitter.
Many on the Book of Many Faces could use it.
That was fuckin' hilarious. My boss was next to me on the phone, and I tried so hard not to burst out laughing.
I created another thread quite some time ago about people who can't spell. I've become less of a bitch about it over the years, but I'm still annoyed by it. I proofread everything I write multiple times, and if I realize later that I made any spelling errors, I feel extremely ashamed of myself.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. Luckily, it doesn't happen very often, but I'm not one to overlook typing mistakes in my own writing. I make plenty of them, sure, but they're quite easy to spot when glancing back at what I've written.
Poor spelling doesn't bother me as much. No use crying over spillt milk, I say. I just think that the web slang needs to be cut down.
I'm pretty sure that's the best thing I've seen all month.
Yall know what? Since I posted this a few days ago, my typing has turned to complete and utter crap. lol
Just thought yall would find that amusing, especially since now I feel like I have to be uber careful so as not to sound hypocritical. lol
Irony is a bitch isn't it? lol
Ah thank dat ppl shudnt type like this 'cause is dumb and like uneducated. it's hard 2 understand when ppl are txting and all dat u cant understand dem.
I honestly hate it when people do that. lol
Some people may call me old-fashioned, and they would be right. I'm proud of being old-fashioned like that. lol
So am I!
I hate the stupid fucking ebonics speak and all that booool shiiiit. Fuck dat shiiiit mang!
There's irony.
Yeah, Jaws just doesn't do Ebonics justice. lol
I'll be the first to admit my posts don't always come out picture perfect, especially if I happen to be emotional when I write them. But generally speaking I at least make te effort to proofread them before submitting. I agree that poor spelling is less of an annoyance than outright laziness. And as far as I'm concerned that textspeak crap is plain and simple laziness. I'll use LOL on a daily basis but that's as far as I go. I made myself a solemn promise tat I would never resort to cutting corners even while texting, even if it means a few folks think I'm too old-fashioned.
Verry well said indeed.
Yep, I'm addicted to lol. That's about the only one though. I think the one that annoys me the most is "ur" which I guess is to stand for you are.
I've seen some pretty bad ones: Punctuation in the middle of sentences, no punctuation at all, and those sentences that look like they're written by someone who thinks the enter key is the space bar. I honestly wonder how some of these people passed English class.
yes ur stands for you are. I hate that one.
you guys are in serious need of a life. so someone makes spelling mistakes. gasp shock and shake they might even use incorrect punctuation. i don't see the world ending over this. it's not even close to spinning out of control. have a little compassion. chillax!!!!! stress will kill you . get annoyed over something you can change. if you can't read or don't like the way a message is structured, for crap sake go to the next one. these boards are supposed to be about communication not punctuation.
Um... you can change people's poor spelling and punctuation. Allow me to introduce you to my two friends, education and correction. They'd like to take you out for coffee to discuss their usefulness.
thank you, Cody. and yes, it does matter; not so much on the message boards, but try writing a professional Email like that and see how seriously you are taken.
Agrees with Cody and Jessica. And don't get pissed off at me, get pissed at the professionals who have high expectations of your sentence structure and grammatical correctness. Surprisingly enough, there are people who write papers with slang language and text speak in school.
lol That'll probably change their senior year of college if or when they have to write 50 to 100 page papers, and get a passing grade on those papers in order to graduate..
Grrr. Chillax? What the hell is that?
It's a mix between chill and relax. Lol. I hear it quite a lot.
You spelled conjugate wrong! You should learn to proofread, maybe? Oy!
I know what it is. It's still ridiculous. It's another one I won't use. What's wrong with just relax?
/me buys everyone a Franklin language master.
Ah yes. I used to have a lot of fun with those.
It's a handy dandy little unit. I still have mine, like to get the latest upgrade, which I'm told has better speech and many more features.
Wow. Bet they aren't cheap though.
Used to have one of those a long time ago. What new features do they have, I wonder.
i had one way back when I was in grade school. It definitely was a cool device
Yep, so did I. I think I might still have it somewhere, but whether it still works I'm not sure.
There was some crazy design flaw in the old ones like I have that would cause the speech to make weird noises when the batteries were low. You couldn't turn it off then, you had to actually pull the batteries out. Lol.
Don't you just hate board posts that have nothing to do with the topic?
For example, a topic that starts out having to do with proofreading and winds up with Franklin Language Masters?
Me too!
Bob
Awww, let me get my violin and play you some sad music.
Shame on you for dumping on the language master. lol.
The point was that the Language Master might help people remember how proper English worked, which many people, sighted as well as blind, seem to have forgotten.
Indeed.
To the original poster, I feel your pain. Lol. I always proof read my posts. I want to at least look literate. And bad spelling annoys me too. I just love the English language, and don't like seeing it mangled.
hey hey.
Glad I have excemption for my mistakes. As I'm not an englis speaking fella and I was not born to an englis ding dong either. lol.
Dinesh aka Raaj.
Doing a comparison of an english paper in college to this board or sight for that matter is like comparing apples to oranges. Your not going to turn your post in to a college class and nor are you going to post your paper here unless for whatever reason you feel like doing so. To some this up, if you do not like what a person wrote or there way of writing pass it up and go on with life.
But the internet is not a school literature class.
Sometimes it isn't a question of whether or not I like what a person has to say, it's whether or not I can understand them.
If someone's writings are unintelligible, I wonder if their thinking is too.
I'm not saying that's the case, I'm just wondering.
Now about that language master... Never mind!
Bob
I have a friend who, whenever we chat on a messaging service, I am constantly having to go through her messages letter by letter, and even then I am often having to guess at what she says. She uses slang, shortened words, no punctuation to speak of, and often simply leaves words out for no apparent reason. Its infuriating.
I'm not saying you have to correctly use semicolons in your posts, or that you can't end your senetences with prepositions; I don't honestly care. However, if I'm having to go over a word in your post to figure out what it is, you're doing it wrong. That's why you should proofread your posts.
That, and there are many words which are necessary to a post, that you might have missed, or misspelled. It can change your entire message if you misspell the wrong word, or use a homophone.
Finally, commas are very important. A comma is all that stands between, "I helped my uncle jack off a horse", and "I helped my uncle jack, off a horse". We can all admit, those are vastly different sentences.
It seems to me that women do this slang thing mor often. I'm not saying men don't do this so don't all atack me.
Personally, I find it very irritating here on the boards when someone can't even be bothered to make sure their subject line is legible. I often skip over posts just because the subject line makes no sense and/or has horrible spelling, and it makes me not want to read the post.
Actually, an upper case or lower case letter will also make the difference in that sentence. Sorry, but I had to point that out.
I have a newer version of the language master. Unless there's been another upgrade after 2005, it doesn't have anything too special. It uses the LH Michelle voice, can string words together more intelligibly, and if turned off and back on, will resume at the last screen, rather than restarting from the typing area. I don't even know what I did with that thing, but now I want to find it.
As to horrible spelling and why I care, there are times when I actually have to read someone's message carefully before I can decode it, or ask them for clarification on certain words.
For instance, I recently saw someone on twitter spell the word "knives" as "knithes". I'm not sure how you can screw that up, but he did. Maybe he hasn't been doing enough of his brail prooth reeding drils. Yes, those were all typos he made.
I can deal with people writing in abbreviations to save time while texting. However, when apostrophes, or worse, more important punctuation such as commas and periods are left out, it becomes extremely annoying. There's only so far one needs to go before txt spk causes more problems than it solves. For those who have iPhones, you'll understand the frustration of typing on the screen. I can proudly say that I have typed in full sentences since day 1, and I think because of this, my speed has increased hugely. The iPhone is one slight exception i'll make to my spelling pickyness, but I have a serious problem with anyone who can't take the extra half second to add proper punctuation to things.
Oh, and finally, the youtube video: All I can say is that I'm always glad to amuse.
starfly plz tell me how a post like this 1 wouldnt get u annoyed about the way sum ppl rite on this site and y we shood just read it and go on with our lives the idea of posting is pntless if you cant reed wht others have to say
OK, most people don't write that badly, but some people do. And worse. I only made a couple spelling mistakes in that example. Some people make so many that decoding their message is impossible if they're not there to tell you what they meant.
hahahahaha I used to have a friend who would write like that, and I would sometimes have to go through the message word by word to understand what she was trying to say.
Even before I got the iPhone, I didn't write texts like that and, it did take longer but I like to be sure I can be understood. Now with the iPhone, sending texts and emails is much easier and faster if you use the dictate button as I do most of the time. The neat thing is that you can say your message and include the proper punctuation and it usually writes it perfectly 99% of the time. :)
@Post 72: Not only that, but young studs, the older chicks who use textspeak are either trying to be younger, are cougars, or are would-be cougars. So, boys, rather than get too upset, maybe you should check out the territory.
There, anyone who was gonna get pissed at Margorp just forgot what he said and is now after Leo. lol
Here's something I hate. There's people who never use any punctuation, which is bad enough, but then there's people who overdo it. For example: There are people, who put, a comma, between, every few words, so you, have to, wonder, when the sentence, will ever, ever, end.
Iagree. If someone can't be understood because of how they choose to type then it is, in fact, a problem, even if we aren't talking about a college paper. I'll be the first to admit I don't always catch all the mistakes I make in my messages but I at least try to proofread as much as possible. I don't mind occasional misspelled words but textspeak really sets my teeth on edge. I've had a few would-be girlfriends ruin their chances with me because of that. LOL is one thing but the rest is just crap.
And let's not forget the everpresent ... or dot dot dot for those who have punctuation turned off. That one drives me nuts, especially when Jaws keeps reading one of those ridiculous babblefest like sentences and the voice pitch just keeps getting lower and lower. It makes me want to scream "BREATHE!" lol.
Ellipses, that's the name of those dot dot dot things, are widely over used. They aren't meant to be a pause in a sentence. So if you were trying to write like you were out of breath, you wouldn't use an ellipses. An ellipses shows that something is taken out. So if you were to go, "I like that color on you, but..." that is a proper use of an ellipses. That is why jaws doesn't read them as pauses, because they aren't pauses.
I know what they're used for. It just bugs the hell out of me when people over or incorrectly use them. I was referring to the way Jaws sounds when reading themn. When he reads for too long, the lack of pauses drives me nuts. It's just a personal thing.
Oh I agree, it drives me nuts to have to try and follow what its saying. I've actually tried to make jaws do that, in mimickry, and I can't manage it.
there's someone on one of the Email lists I'm subscribed to that literally finds a way to incorperate those into every single sentence, at least once. so a typical message would read:
Hi. ...There was a problem I was having, ...and I hoped that someone could help me solve it. ...any responses would be greatly appreciated. ...thanks for the help...
Yes, I kid you not.
There used to be a zone member who typed that way in every post here on the boards. I simply could not stand to read her posts.
I could handle that before I could handle the excessive, or lack of punctuation, but even if you had your screen reader's punctuation level set to none, that would get really annoying, not to mention it must not look very visually presentable, either.
I would imagine that it looks like the scrambled thought it probably is. lol I think it would be even worse in braille.
Yuck! I've never actually seen it used excessively like that in braille, but I can sure imagine it would be quite a mess.
someone wrote me a letter that I brailled just as it was written, with...every few words. it wasn't as bad as some might think, but I wouldn't like reading everything like that. lol.
oh, and for the record, it was a sighted person who wrote me that.