Is the spread of spelling errors good for modern literary accessability?

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T

TotalFusionOne

I mean, just think. With more people accepting spelling errors without commenting we're opening the doors for whole new generations of writers who otherwise would have been held back by poor spelling or grammar. In other words: The internet is singlehandedly responsible for opening the creative writing world up to millions of people who otherwise would have been left out for their perceived un-intelligence.

My next debate will either be: "When did Colour become Color?" or "Is fanfiction/slashfiction 'art?'"
 
C

Chazwozel

I mean, just think. With more people accepting spelling errors without commenting we're opening the doors for whole new generations of writers who otherwise would have been held back by poor spelling or grammar. In other words: The internet is singlehandedly responsible for opening the creative writing world up to millions of people who otherwise would have been left out for their perceived un-intelligence.

My next debate will either be: "When did Colour become Color?" or "Is fanfiction/slashfiction 'art?'"

ITT: The internet has opened the door for a lot of shitty writing.
 

Dave

Staff member
I detest what the internet and especially cell phone texting has done to what people perceive is allowed in communication. For example, my 20+ niece put this yesterday on her Facebook page:

At WrK..GoT ScHoOl In ThE Am..ThEn To ThE ObGyN FoR SoMe TeStS...ThEn BaK To WrK In ThE Pm
My response:

Hopefully school teaches you rules of capitalization and punctuation. Dork.

And they look at this as something totally acceptable and correct, but is really just laziness.
 
I get text talk, when you're actually texting. On forums and such however, you have both the time and space to just type out your thoughts in a normal comprehensible manner, why not put in that little bit of effort in order to not come across as a total moron?
 

Shannow

Staff member
So what, are you telling me how I have to type!? What, are you going to stand over my pc and watch my fingers on the keyboard!!!?? Shit man, you may as well ask to check my bags when I leave a store!!!
 
T

TotalFusionOne

So what, are you telling me how I have to type!? What, are you going to stand over my pc and watch my fingers on the keyboard!!!?? Shit man, you may as well ask to check my bags when I leave a store!!!
Oh I check your bags.

I check them good and hard.
 
T

TotalFusionOne

Fail parody thread is fail.
Maybe. But then again maybe you've just hit on something that most of us feel strongly about.[/QUOTE]

Call me Mr. Cohen.

I actually do find it interesting how strongly people feel about correct grammar and punctuation, myself included. I hate it when my friends post things in teenybopper language. For instance, I once de-friended someone from facebook (the harshest punishment I could find) for the crime of posting something along the lines of: "OoOoOoOoMG I IZ TIERD fuckhaving to work a couble wit out my boi!!!!!!!!! o wel. 420 bitchez!!!!!"

Needless to say she got a tersely worded email after the de-friending.

But even though I feel so anti-text speak, I don't know WHY. I try to practice tolerance and understand in all facets of life, why does blatant "ignorism" of arbitrary rules bother me so much? I can't deny that they ARE arbitrary rules that have no real function except for being the rules that most educated people learned, thus making it easier to understand comprehensive ideas. But if the point of the message is getting across to the audience I don't know why I have such a problem with it.
 
Meh, in a couple of hundred years all the text in this forum will be written wrong by the rules that they'll have... it's how language works...


My next debate will either be: "When did Colour become Color?"
When some self-righteous american decided y'all could do without complicated stuff like words with too many vowels.
 
C

Chazwozel

I detest what the internet and especially cell phone texting has done to what people perceive is allowed in communication. For example, my 20+ niece put this yesterday on her Facebook page:

At WrK..GoT ScHoOl In ThE Am..ThEn To ThE ObGyN FoR SoMe TeStS...ThEn BaK To WrK In ThE Pm
My response:

Hopefully school teaches you rules of capitalization and punctuation. Dork.
And they look at this as something totally acceptable and correct, but is really just laziness.

I it harder to abbreviate words than it is to just fucking type them out, but good gravy capitalizing between every letter??!?!?

---------- Post added at 10:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 AM ----------

I get text talk, when you're actually texting. On forums and such however, you have both the time and space to just type out your thoughts in a normal comprehensible manner, why not put in that little bit of effort in order to not come across as a total moron?
I can understand the whole "txting" thing too. You only get so many characters.
 
I can understand the whole "txting" thing too. You only get so many characters.
If you can't fit all of your message into a text without having to resort to abbreviations and items like 'u' and 'ur' then pick up the damn phone and call the person.
 

Dave

Staff member
Oh and for the record I did notice that you intentionally misspelled "accessibility" but chose not to say anything.
 
C

Chazwozel

I can understand the whole "txting" thing too. You only get so many characters.
If you can't fit all of your message into a text without having to resort to abbreviations and items like 'u' and 'ur' then pick up the damn phone and call the person.

Well if you're like me, you don't like having conversations on the 8:30 train when it's deathly quiet.

---------- Post added at 11:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:12 AM ----------

African American actor Wesley Snipes?
Haha Dave, look up New Jersey Nick on youtube and you'll get all his crazy ads.

ZUUUUNNNEEEEEEE
 

ElJuski

Staff member
Of course he got that. He posted that video.

As for the language thing...well, of course language changes, but the most important thing is that people can still effectively and efficiently communicate. So, context, context, context.

However, all that bullshit internet talk and lax social-writing really fucks these kids hard when they're supposed to write papers, memos, and professional e-mails. My prof laments a student who wrote her an e-mail with a lowercase 'u'.

Bcuz, u kno, at soem point ppl gunna lok atchu liek n adlt j00 dumass fukn kidz
 
C

Chazwozel

Of course he got that. He posted that video.

As for the language thing...well, of course language changes, but the most important thing is that people can still effectively and efficiently communicate. So, context, context, context.

However, all that bullshit internet talk and lax social-writing really fucks these kids hard when they're supposed to write papers, memos, and professional e-mails. My prof laments a student who wrote her an e-mail with a lowercase 'u'.

Bcuz, u kno, at soem point ppl gunna lok atchu liek n adlt j00 dumass fukn kidz

Well that's the long and short of it folks. Your fucking iPhone consumerist society may say it's okay to use text speak, but the professional world says otherwise.

Writing is a lot like verbal communication. I speak a certain way at work, and another way around my kids and yet another way around certain friends. Context ftw bitches!
 

North_Ranger

Staff member
Oh, I think it's perfectly fine that people are more relaxed about tolerating spelling errors and omitting punctuation.

It makes target practice so much easier.

 
Until the end of the Great Vowel Shift in the 1700s, spelling was almost completely irrelevant to the English language. People merely spelled things how they sounded.

From Chaucer:
Whan that Auerth wt his shoures soote,
The droghte of Marcħ, hath perced to the roote;
And bathed euery veyne in swich lycour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

It's funny how, in the age of online, readily-accessible dictionaries and spelling bees, we're slowly seeing a decline in the other direction. Trust me, in another 100 years, we'll be back to Chaucer.
 
People merely spelled things how they sounded.
Phonetic spelling is awesome and i for one am very glad that when my country went back to using latin characters (from church slavonic) for spelling the guys on the side of phonetic spelling won.
 
My mom's cell phone has a mini-keyboard thing, she basically types on a computer for a living, but she still sends texts spelled like "can u cal me when u get a chance." It baffles me, because she's better with grammar and spelling than most people I know.
 
A

Armadillo

Am I the only person on Earth who writes his texts with proper spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax? If it's worth typing, it's worth typing correctly, you lazy punks.
 
One of my friends teaches eighth grade. His kids write essays in the same manner with which they text. It's retarded, and writing like a retard shouldn't be tolerated outside of your cell phone's text box. And if there are less Internet writers as a result, then I applaud it; most of the fan fiction out there is positively fulsome. We should use education to eradicate most of this vile populism, not encourage it.

I'm not positive, but I have reason to believe the general decline in high culture has something to do with people writing like LOLcats. Since it started becoming acceptable to write like a complete moron, more and more brainless shows have ruined the History Channel, the Learning Channel, and A&E. When was the last time they showed anything educational?
 

ElJuski

Staff member
Am I the only person on Earth who writes his texts with proper spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax? If it's worth typing, it's worth typing correctly, you lazy punks.
I don't know if you know the things I deem worth typing.
 
I text like I'm writing in English too, Armadillo. But there are certain people I accept text-talk from, my mother chief among them. If I had to wait for her to write a complete sentence, I would never hear from her.

As for the argument that in a century we'll be typing an English that looks much more similar to text-talk, I disagree. The bastion of the English language is academia, and this shit simply will not fly there. There will be changes, but all of this 1337speak and/or text-talk will not be assimilated. I would bet my life on it.
 
R

rabbitgod

Until the end of the Great Vowel Shift in the 1700s, spelling was almost completely irrelevant to the English language. People merely spelled things how they sounded.

From Chaucer:
Whan that Auerth wt his shoures soote,
The droghte of Marcħ, hath perced to the roote;
And bathed euery veyne in swich lycour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

It's funny how, in the age of online, readily-accessible dictionaries and spelling bees, we're slowly seeing a decline in the other direction. Trust me, in another 100 years, we'll be back to Chaucer.
+1 to this.

Holy crap, I've been reading a lot of letters from New England colonists back to their families and good lord the spelling and grammar is terrible.
 
One of my friends teaches eighth grade. His kids write essays in the same manner with which they text. It's retarded, and writing like a retard shouldn't be tolerated outside of your cell phone's text box. And if there are less Internet writers as a result, then I applaud it; most of the fan fiction out there is positively fulsome. We should use education to eradicate most of this vile populism, not encourage it.

I'm not positive, but I have reason to believe the general decline in high culture has something to do with people writing like LOLcats. Since it started becoming acceptable to write like a complete moron, more and more brainless shows have ruined the History Channel, the Learning Channel, and A&E. When was the last time they showed anything educational?
What brainless shows are you talking about? Out of the channels listed, the only one I watch with any regularity is The History Channel and I don't see anything on there that's brainless.
 
N

nufan

So I can go all grammar queen up in these boards? Sweet.
:)

Texting is a form of communication slowly building it's own accepted 'rules'. Now those so-called-rules are sliding into every other form of the written word. I love the "It's the way things are" and "It's how everyone is doing it man", "Don't be a narc, you narc" excuses. Please stop using other peoples idiocy to blame you're own laziness.

I don't care how you text or spell but if you expect me to understand it we both have to use the same rules.
 
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