Spelling, punctuation and grammar!

Or another way to say this is, "The Love of Money is the Root of all Evil" I have that pet peeve also when people quote stuff wrong. Yea, "money is the root of all evil" Pshhh.

If you think of this as some kind of pompous posing, you're seeing exactly the wrong thing. The point of good, correct spelling is to ensure that I can read what you wrote in the same way as you intended it to be read. This means we must both be using the same rules and, preferably, the same language, otherwise it's all just a lot of shouting around, and while that can be fun, it is remarkably unproductive if you want to actually communicate something. If you speak with a mouth full of mush, you don't get to chide me for rolling my eyes and walking away.

Secondly, it is a question of presentation, as it so often transpires that the people with the worst, most offensive writing are also the ones who hold the most controversial opinions and bring up the hottest (or often coldest) topics. As such, it falls on the presenter to win over his audience, and writing in a manner that is difficult to read is an incredibly poor way to do this, akin to shouting incoherent garble in someone's face and expecting them to regard your request with care and respect in return. You know, instead of bolting for security.

If I see a post that is difficult to read and requires me to trace through it multiple times just so that I can parse its intended meaning, only to realise even that makes barely any sense, I'm going to either skip it entirely, or just read it diagonally in the best case, choosing, instead, to rely on what others have replied in putting together what it is they're replying to. And in a lot of cases, these people have done the same thing I did and skipped most of the post anyway, giving me false information, leading to the poster than crying to their mommy how everyone is mean and no-one understands them. Yeah, if you can't read in a comprehensible way, people will not understand, nor indeed care to try to.

It really comes down to a simple rule of effort return - the more effort you put into posting something well, the more likely people are to respond to it well, in turn. If you choose to be sloppy, then the consequences of that are on your own back.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

No, but when you type things wrong, sometimes you look (note: not you per-se) But, in general people look like an idot.

Yes, I sometimes type something wrong by accident, but I will admit when I do and move on. But when people who are in College and HS or adults who should know better than use linguistics wrong should use spell check sometimes.

Like your example "because they have better things to do than use spell check, it makes me feel like people are going out of their(the're/there) way to make themselves look better by trying to make me look worse"

When you use Their, that is the right one. Not the're or there. There is apposed to a position and the're is a shortned They are. It's simple to use the right verbage. Not looking down on anyone. Heck, even I have to look to my wife to spell simple things when I should know better. LMAO

To add: Sometimes it's fun to spel rong in game to mess wit people. u no wut i meen? :P

You'd be a lone in that assessment. I can not figure out why.


Wow, you got four people to answer to that horrid excuse for a cheesy pun.

Good job!

"Speak of the Devil" when someone you're talking about enters the room, versus "Speak of the Devil, and his tail will surely follow."

Then again, alternatives for the same phrase are "Speak of the devil and he doth appear," and "Talk of the Devil, and he's presently at your elbow."

You may feel free to use written language with whatever degree of imprecision suits you. However, it is unrealistic to expect others to refrain from making judgments based on how you express yourself, especially when your written words comprise the overwhelming bulk of the data available for us to evaluate. If another poster does not care to express their ideas clearly, it suggests to me as a reader that they don't care that much about whatever it was they had to say, because obviously they didn't put much effort into ensuring that I'd understand it easily. As a person who cares a great deal about expressing myself with clarity and precision, I have a greater inclination to react favorably to those who appear similarly disposed. My reaction is much the same to spoken exchanges featuring slurred speech, mumbling, use of arcane slang or technical vocabulary outside of those circles familiar with such (a particular personal irritant, often employed as an assertation of dominance through superior depth of knowledge), or anything else that inhibits actual communication.

Regarding punctuation, the rules are often so staggeringly vague, contradictory, or just plain poorly thought out that I feel free to disregard them whenever and wherever they annoy me. For example, the discussion regarding the placement of punctuation within parenthesis a few posts back. The 'mathematical' approach, where the period is outside of the parenthesis because it is meant to apply to the entire sentence, makes perfect sense to me. I have every intention of defying tradition and style in my personal usage. The important points here are clarity and precision. Where a rule of grammar appears in conflict with either principle, I'm quite content to let that rule die.

tl;dr

Communicate in whatever manner suits you, with the understanding that I will judge you in whatever manner suits me. If you don't care about your words enough to at least try to use them correctly, I can't imagine why I should care enough about your words to attempt to interpret their intended meaning.

Edit: Also, consider the word decimate. It means "to reduce by 1/10th." It does not mean "to generally destroy, demolish, ruin, wreck, corrupt, collapse, break, batter or vandalise."

ORLY?

Wird! um...I mean. Werd...er...Wurd!

My give up.

Five!

If a new usage for a word only gains academic acceptance within my lifetime, I am permitted to gripe about it forever. Decimate may be listed with that definition now, but it was not ten years ago. Reference volumes may surrender ground to common misuse, but I never will.

K.

Language changes. Not always in a good way. I mean, practically speaking, losing a limb is change, but I'm hardly lining up to be changed.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Does it mean I get an AWESOME bionic arm? If so, sign me up! Hell, give me a chainsaw, (WARNING explicit fake gore!!!!) I'll do it myself!

Um... today's common usage for 'decimate' (destroy a large portion of) started in the 19th century. That's over 100 years ago, not 10.

And I have trouble believing you're over 100 years old.

Thank you, Joey Tribbiani.

I operate a family owned used and antique bookstore. We have currently in stock a pile of dictionaries dating back as far as 1922. Of the eleven I could find in the twenty minutes I decided to devote to this dispute, only two of them are newer than 1981 (and therefore reflect the shape of the language within my lifetime). All but one of them have an entry for decimate. None of them contain a definition that matches what you describe as the 'common' usage. Those that contain a definition all affirm that it is "to reduce by one-tenth."

Do you have an alternate source available?

You've got to be kidding me. I've been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It's just common sense.

This post is seven shades of Westley crazy.

Also, eschew obfuscation.

Did I just lose my ability to read English text?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Actually according to my St. Martin's Handbook, section 30d:

I always use a comma after every element of a list three or more long. It's altogether correct, appropriate, and proper.

By the way, my pet peeve is people who confuse to and too. It ain't that hard. But then, I'm a grammar pedant, especially when it comes to my own writing. It really bothers me when I screw something up, which is why I edit my posts a couple of times around 50% of the time I post something on these forums. I don't make very many grammatical errors, but I have been known to be typo-prone.

She was yet another one down to the unexpected, a girl of defiance and aggression extending the heck out of the brighter rules. Her eyes were pale blue and more important than the warm skin of sight. Between the cow and the flood of her tears, between the courtesy of the two things that swam in them, between the regard of and the ignoring of those rules, she struck out above and behind, this abundant hoop driver, calmly: of time, deciphered; of sight, stopped.

Gotta watch out for those porpoises, particularly the intense ones.

Yes! No! Maybe?