Spelling standards on ATS need improvement

Its not about being high and mighty or proving your superiority. It's about respect for the people you are addressing and respect for your own thoughts. If you spell horribly you not only bring down the quality of posts on ATS, which is damaging for the site, but you don't give your own thoughts proper credit. You basically say that your own thoughts aren't good enough to properly articulate them, thus showing you have no respect for yourself.

It should be done out of common courtesy and self respect if nothing else.

My Opinion

Someone actually responded to me!!! cool

But anyway I don't care about common courtesy and respect that much.

I don't see how you can bring down the quality of a post!! it's not like

people cant figure out the word thats spelled incorrectly.

Spelling incorrectly means you don't have respect for yourself? huh

But to each their own I guess, I choose not to care, others choose to care.

and thats my opinion

ya'll have a great day

I understand the message in this thread, but there is another side to it.

Some members might not be confident when using the internet, especially when it comes to posting.

To create a thread criticising those who's language skills are not perfect may put them off ever posting on ATS again. Do you want that? No, of course not.

We should not be alienating and isolating members over "spelling".



[edit on 28-9-2007 by infinite]

I do agree wholeheartedly, infinite. In fact, I often find myself agreeing with the "message" of a poorly-written post, cringing occasionally nonetheless, but yes I hope my thread hasn't discouraged anyone here from posting at ATS.

Originally posted by RiotComing

1) Misuse of 'your' (e.g. your wrong)
2) 'could of' instead of could've (e.g. Iran could of sent in reptilian secret agents to kill Steve Fossett)
3) Isreal rather than Israel (this one isn't as common as it used to be, but still crops up occasionally)
4) Usage of plurals with apostrophes in them (e.g. usage of plural's with apostrophe's in them)
5) Usage of their or there instead of they're (e.g. their not going to nuke America)

This to me, is stuff you learn when you are 6, 7 years old.

They teach all of that in Kindergarten in New Zealand? Pretty impressive educational system you have there. I understand your point though.

Kindergarten is age 0-5. At age 5-8, you go to what is called "primary school", when the child learns the basics of spelling and writing. You learn about plurals and apostrophe usage. Commas, fullstops, all that sort of thing. I believe in parents teaching their children first and foremost, and not relying on the education system to do it. It's the kids that aren't excited about learning at home that are pushed to go to school and don't react too well when it comes to being told what to do by a teacher.

But that's another topic altogether, haha. I don't believe in total homeschooling either, because it denies the child the social contact. But I digress..

Originally posted by stellawayten

Originally posted by RiotComing
I notice quite a few members who make the same weird errors and repeatedly do it as if they don't actually realise that they have made a mistake. .

It's actually realize.

Yah that's just to dumb it down for americans. If it wasn't spelt with a "z" you wouldn't know how to pronounce it.

I was almost afraid to post in this thread because I'm an offender.
Without a built in spell checker I would be known as the "Butcher Of The English Language".


This is what I see if I misspell a word in the reply form.



One click and it gives me options to correct it.
Why won't everyone just get a spell checker, it's free ???

Originally posted by mad scientist

Yah that's just to dumb it down for americans. If it wasn't spelt with a "z" you wouldn't know how to pronounce it.

Well I don't know how to dumb it down for whatever nationality you are, but around here we're taught to capitalize proper nouns, like Americans.

It's not easy, so here's a wiki link:

When to capitalize

After all, this is the spelling thread, so I'd be remiss not to point this out.

[edit on 1-10-2007 by Badge01]

Originally posted by Badge01

Originally posted by mad scientist

Yah that's just to dumb it down for americans. If it wasn't spelt with a "z" you wouldn't know how to pronounce it.

Well I don't know how to dumb it down for whatever nationality you are, but around here we're taught to capitalize proper nouns, like Americans.

It's not easy, so here's a wiki link:

When to capitalize

After all, this is the spelling thread, so I'd be remiss not to point this out.

Haha, depends if you think americans are worth a capital letter. I deliberately didn't use a capital, but you get double points being an american who picked it up. I'm almost impressed.

reply to post by Miishgoos

Someone actually responded to me!!! cool

Dat happen to me too sometime, ror,

Heres da problem, some of us are beautiful, some of us are intelligent, some of us are beautiful and intelligent, some of us are, wise yet don't spell so good,

Then there are natives in the Amazon who know lots about tings you know noting of, maybe day nebber even write a ting, yet they might survive off land , you on the otner hand would be like

intelligent grammatical correct "dead duck"

So there are different levels of intelligence, and looks or lack of both.


I could go on.



[edit on 073131p://bMonday2007 by Stormdancer777]

reply to post by onthefence81



That's the point being made, I think. Why should we have to attempt, not always successfully, to decipher bad spelling? Punctuation, on the other hand, gives me fits on a fairly regular basis. I suppose my High School English teacher, God grant him rest; gets a fairly regular case of the giggles watching me attempt to use it.

If someone, somewhere, could come up with a punctuation checker, I'd without a doubt buy that person a beer, if only metaphorically.

reply to post by mad scientist


That's rather a nasty attitude to have. Nothing like a little stereotyping to make your world go 'round, eh?

reply to post by semperfortis


I actually could, though my brain kinda, sorta, hurt afterwards.

.

Looky, looky at this specimen found today!

img219.imageshack.us...

Tsk tsk! It pains me to see that the 'offender' was a fellow New Zealander!

I've been reading ATS for a couple of weeks and so far I find it to be the best thing that I've found on the web in a long, long time.

But the usage of the English language in a large number of the posts has been bothering me. I was going to start a thread on this topic but luckily I was wise enough to first do a search.

At this stage, I figure that one of the following must be the case:

1. There are numerous posters here for whom English is not their mother tongue.
   
2. There are numerous posters here who ceased their formal education at about 12 years of age.
   
3. American and British schools ceased teaching grammar, spelling and basic composition at some point in the past.
   

If (1) is the case then you can just ignore the remainder of this post and give me a swift kick in the derriere because these folks are doing much better at composing in English than I could probably do in either of the two non-English languages which I am able to read.

If (1) is not the case then I think that the part of this world for which English is the mother-tongue has a rather bleak future. It shows that either the educational systems are inadequate or that the people are either unable or unwilling to learn.

The most glaring errors have already been mentioned in previous posts, so I won't itemize them here. It is easy to separate the typographical errors (which all of us make) from the errors of comprehension. Maybe I'm what David Foster Wallace refers to as a "SNOOT" but when I see a post littered with spelling errors, grammatical errors and composed in a nearly incoherent manner, my first thoughts are to wonder about the validity of the content of the post. In my opinion, putting up a post with these errors is like going to a job interview unshaven, unwashed wearing a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt three sizes too big. Do you just not care or do you just not know any better? Impressions do count and do serve a purpose.

If any of you are interested, for a good essay on English usage I would highly recommend "Authority and American Usage" in Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace. It is an excellent piece of writing and actually pretty darned entertaining.

For something more academic you might want to take a look at Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing by Michael Heim. This book is a little dated (1987) but give a view on how writing and composition have changed as it has progressed from pen-and-ink to typewriter to word processor.

reply to post by stellawayten


Actually it's both depends on where you are in the world. All commonwealth countries spell it with an "s"

reply to post by Noscitare


Ever heard of Dyslexia? I don't suffer from it myself, but I know many others do. And with members from all over the world, it can't be perfect. Even eskimos with dyslexia should be able to speak their mind, while treated with respect in these forums. Even Bigfoot should be able to speak his mind in here. As long as it's within the T&C, it's good. I prefer originality, not uniform, robot language. All speak the same way. Must...speak...perfect english...all the... time...

reply to post by Noscitare


Salve te! Coelvm noscitare, stellarvm somnare

Trying to improve spelling on ATS is a lost cause my friend.

You go through stages, though.

At some pint yule mabey get two teh stage "were you know linger care two longer". (shrug)

At any rate thanks for trying. Oh, and you slightly misspelled derrière.

reply to post by Hellmutt


Dear Hellmutt, why not adopt a system where the 'spelling and grammar' are not frowned upon, but were good composition is rewarded?.

You can find reasons to promote egalitarianism to a fault. Harrison Bergeron,

Why not make it mandatory that EVERY poster MUST have a couple misspellings in every post so as not to make dyslexic Eskimos feel unwanted?

In fact, I like that idea and I will adopt it forthwith.

BTW, you committed a significant slight on Eskimos by not capitalizing their name. (sticks out tounge)

(there are two misspellings in this post).