Grammar on a forum

[½ Sane]

A board I belonged to last year had members using words I seldom ever see. It almost got sickening to keep up with. Funny how all that stopped when a thread named “pervs” got rolling.

[Circle_One]

Originally Posted by Rex_Admin

I almost think of a forum as note taking, which of course has no grammar whatsoever.


Do you like to use perfect grammar on forums?

I like to use proper grammar everywhere, even in notetaking. I know how to use it and so I see no reason not to.

Originally Posted by Caiman

I just don't see the point in not writing correctly if you have the ability to do so, on my site for instance, the amount of users who think it is cool to spell incorrectly and fill their posts with numbers in the middle of work etc etc is starting to annoy me somewhat. It's tolerable, barely

I never could understand the allure of seeming to have the intelligence of an illiterate lab monkey that escaped and found a computer. That evil "chatspeak" is never tolerable to me and I will (and have on more than one occasion) brutally flame anyone that types like that in my presence.

[Hope]

I try not to judge people by their grammar usage or lack thereof, but I have to admit, as someone whose intelligence lies mainly in language skills, it does drive me nuts to see words misspelled or grammar skewed. Especially misspelled words! Aggghhhhh!! They are a pet peeve of mine. Whenever I post something, I am always careful to spell correctly and use the best grammar I can....not because I'm trying to impress anyone, but because I'm a perfectionist, and every little word and sentence matters to me. I just can't accept anything less than my best!

[Circle_One]

Originally Posted by Hope

I try not to judge people by their grammar usage or lack thereof, but I have to admit, as someone whose intelligence lies mainly in language skills, it does drive me nuts to see words misspelled or grammar skewed. Especially misspelled words! Aggghhhhh!! They are a pet peeve of mine. Whenever I post something, I am always careful to spell correctly and use the best grammar I can....not because I'm trying to impress anyone, but because I'm a perfectionist, and every little word and sentence matters to me. I just can't accept anything less than my best!

That's pretty much how I am to. I write for my own magazine, so I'm definitely a perfectionist when it comes to my spelling and grammar. I don't judge others when they make a mistake or two, it's inevitable that tiny mistakes go overlooked, but when people just spell wrong because they are either too lazy to fix it or because they refuse to learn how to spell words properly, then I get annoyed.

[Bastet]

For the most part, I try to write grammatically correct sentences, and if I'm unsure of the spelling of a word, I'll look it up. I keep a dictionary within reach for such a purpose. That being said, I know there are times when proper grammar, punctuation, etc. goes out the window for me (usually when I'm going for a joke, I'm tired, or feeling lazy), and I do have a tendency to ramble slightly incoherantly when trying to make a point sometimes. The sentence I just typed is a fine example of this.
In a similar thread in the Debates section not too long ago, someone said how much they hate people using 'LOL' and other commonly used internet acronyms. They don't annoy me (as evidenced by my own use of them), because I see it as no different from using a smiley - it simply conveys the intended emotion of the sentence, in a format where things can sometimes be otherwise misconstrued.
Things I do hate seeing are words (and I use the term loosely), like: l8r, gurlz, sez, ur, cya. They're not particularly easy to read, and I always stumble over them if someone uses them in a sentence (especially if they do it a lot). Just for the record, I don't consider 'luv' to be in this category (although I know of several people this particular one really ****** off). This one for me, is an endearment, and not the same as the word 'love'.
One of my pet peeves is improper capitalization - either the lack of, at the beginning of a sentence, or capitalization of words that are not proper nouns, within a sentence. If you want to emphasise a word within a sentence, use italic or bold text. Misspelled words can bug me too, especially if the person in question has quoted another post with the word spelled correctly, and then goes and spells it wrong in their reply - repeatedly. Bad punctuation usually only gets to me when it interferes with the meaning of a sentence. Sometimes the absence of a comma can totally change what someone is trying to say.
Really though, as much as these things may bug me, I will do my best to ignore it. I even stayed out of that other thread in the Debates section...I caved when I saw this one though.

[retrorich]

So the story goes...

Winston Churchill (an outstanding writer) was once criticized for ending a sentence with a preposition.

Allegedly, he replied:

"That is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."

Good one, Winnie!

[michel]

Me, I try to use correct grammar. Do I succeed ? I haven't a clue, because no one is 'marking' my posts and returning them to me with the errors underlined.

An amusing thought is that of Winston Churchill, who put the whole question in a nutshell; when someone once criticised something he wrote, or said (I really cannot remember the details) he replied with an immediate "This is behaviour up with which I will not put."

[Bastet]

It was funnier the first time when retrorich said it, michel.

[Scuba Pete]

You know... it's funny when people don't read ALL the way to the end before they post an answer!