Does grammar matter to you?

[VeggieBoy]

I always try to use the best grammar, thats why I always edit my posts so much to fix some typos.

I catch myself doing that a lot. I don't have a cell currently... I am in the process and I am getting a Blackberry because my dad spoils me. So I have no excuse to "tak like an idiet in a tex conv"... Anyways I was talking to someone today and their sentence was like 10 paragraphs in one. I couldn't understand it at all and ended up taking a Tylenol from trying to sort it out. I had to because it contained very valuable information in it (even though it was wrote by an idiot). :eek4:

 

[oiwio]

I hate it when people dont use grammar very well when Im talking to them. But when its typing, I couldnt care less as long as I understand it.

 

[callumacrae]

I hate it when people say 'I need them in A.S.A.P'. It's really annoying.
I don't mind people not putting apostrophes in on msn or something like that but I hate people not typing 'I' instead of 'i' as it makes no difference to the speed. And if people are going to type 'lol' or 'wtf' at least CAPITALISE IT! They are abbreviations after all!

 

[TechAsh]

I think things like LOL and BTW are ok (I use them quite oftern), but some people go over the top and then it becomes completely unreadable.

 

[noerrorsfound]

I think things like LOL and BTW are ok (I use them quite oftern), but some people go over the top and then it becomes completely unreadable.

LOL seems to have evolved to just be a filler used when someone doesn't have anything else to say. Next time you're reading forum posts, playing a game, or using an instant messenger, pay attention to every time someone says "lol" and ask yourself if they're really laughing out loud.

I'm Typing LOL

 

[Zdroyd]

yess! i hate wen peple use bad gramor on forms! itis so anoyin! lol

Actualy yes I do hate when people use bad grammer. Everyone should at least try to type proper... But I don't see using acronyms like; lol and rofl. It is a lot easyer to say LOL then say HA HA HA AH AHA HA HA.

But to the point people should be more profesional and at least atempt to type good.

 

[Aruskano]

It matters when I try to communicate with an english speaker, they don't even think that I'm not an english speaker and I have to guess their messages! [I'm referring to 'btw', 'wtf', etc] I extremeadly hate when someone writes with capital letters!

My answer is: Yes, it matters to me.

 

[deadimp]

I try and make a point of using good grammar 'n all that myself but, I guess to VeggieBoy's dismay, I tend to use colloquialisms a lot. I don't say "y'all" too much, but that doesn't stop me from never using it.

As for other people's grammar, I enjoy being able to read a post with ease, which means it's been at least somewhat properly formatted. I can understand a few errors or so, since no one should really be that perfect, but I hate it when it looks like someone's fingers were in braces and they couldn't reach anything other the numbers and letters.
To put some perspective on it, when I read I try to imagine the person's voice in my head. I don't know why, that's just what I do. When I read a post that's been written without grammar or with a huge amount of 1337, the voice kinda sounds like Meatwad off of ATHF.

Going off of what Aruskano said, I also browse around the Spanish forums, just trying to pick something up from them, tryping to help out (keyword trying). It's kind of confusing when I see shorthand like "no c si deboacer eso y meparece k esta roto". It takes me a little while to figure what they're saying, what with the lack of proper spelling and acentuation. I guess that's my fault for trying to learn off of a message board, though. Plus, it gives me a little more insight on their colloquialisms, I gues.

 

[MaestroFX1]

Good grammar makes sense...as simple as that.

 

[crisp]

I've just voted, and I'm glad to see I'm not in the minority on this subject. I find it infuriating. It's not just in the on-line world either, even 'professionals' aren't exempt, journalists and the like. You just know that they ran their copy through a spell-checker, and gave no thought whatsoever to the grammar, so you have "your" where it should have been "you're", "their" instead of "there" etc. As an example, Micro-mart, a publication I read here in the UK, regularly does this, with incorrect use of grammar littered throughout the articles they publish. It appears that not even proof reading is employed (either that, or the proof readers are just as bad).

I, like the original poster often talk with friends who's faces go blank when I utter a word of more than two syllables, with the obligatory "Have you just swallowed a dictionary?" remark as their only response of meaning.

Having said all that, I don't think the odd lol as an expression of emotion is a bad thing, although when virtually every word is "text speak" I tend to stop reading, it's too much trouble to decipher, and in most cases the writer has nothing of interest to say anyway.

Maybe a lesson there for those that think it's ok? Are you sure anyone can understand/is paying attention to what you say?

 

[Mindbleed]

Well in IM every now and then I do not mind a "wtf" or some other message, But when you are writing an email or a long post, you should try to use proper grammer.

For example, if you actually think people will be reading what you write, use language that makes sense.

 

[mender42]

Mostly it does not bother me at all. Most errors are innocent enough , I do enough typos myself to fill a dictionary. The word "typo" itself was a grammatical error not so long ago, so to an extent grammatical errors today are the grammatical syntax of tomorrow. That's a sign of a living language.

Non-english speakers parse nouns and verbs differently in their native tongue, so I don't mind at all, it's better than I can do in their language! Ever try to ask a question in Dannish or Spanish? I have. Thank goodness everyone was patient and spoke a smattering of different languages, we worked it out.

So long as there is good communication, I have no problem, using say gaming or texting lingo in a forum can really PK a good thread though. Smiles like pictures are worth a thousand words.

I say use the language that communicates the best to the audience your addressing.

Nuf sed. CU 8)

 

[Stormscape]

It is my personal opinion that grammar and spelling highly reflects the intelligence of the person behind the words. If you cannot even possibly be bothered to type correctly enough so that the vast majority of people in the English-speaking portion of the Internet can understand what you are attempting to convey, why should anybody care about what you say?

 

[mender42]

I am always humbled by individuals who's first, second, third language is NOT english. By the time they get to english it's like another toy application.

In Great Britain (I'm sure you will agree a very English country) it is almost mandantory to speak at least one other language.

Have you checked out an Internic map lately? The internet is not necessarily english-centric....and growing. There are fabulous artists, musicians, programmers, support techs and scientists who durn well are worthy of listening to who speak their native language NOT english and when they do make the effort to say something on the internet I'm listening to what they have to say, not spell checking or worried about anyone's grammer. You don't know what your missing!

Take a tour in a dictionary, see origins, what is English? Well now, some mispronounced old-english with many many borrowed, misused, mispronounced grammatically incorrect words from other languages! Linguistics - a very strange and wonderful thing to behold.
Internet - a very beautiful, strange and wonderful thing to behold. See:

http://www.caida.org/research/topology/as_core_network/2007/

And this is older data but it still demonstrates um, ..., that we manglish, are not alone.
http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography/atlas/topology.html

Viva la differance!

 

[Stormscape]

Take a tour in a dictionary, see origins, what is English?

So very true. As one man once said, 'English is the language which has mugged every language which has ever visited its shores for their loose pocket change.'
English is less a language and more an amalgamation of many different dozens of languages from various points in history. Latin, French, German, Spanish, Italian, all have their places in the English language. English borrowed its basic sentence structure from German and changed it greatly over the centuries. From French it received many words, especially during the 100 years war in the 14th and 15th centuries. Of course Latin is the base for nearly every language that currently uses the Latin alphabet for everyday text, so not much can be said in that regard.

 

[mender42]

Unless you happen to be texting in Cyryllic (eastern Europe), Konji (Japanese). There is another popular Japanese text set I can't remember it's name, and especially in China there at least two texting ideogram styles used specifically for Internet and text messages. Then there is Korean, Hindi, Arabic...the list goes on.

So your right in the sense that I cannot much comment in Latin characters regarding any of the languages above, because I cannot read those languages!

I'm just saying we English speakers do not have a monopoly. Babblefish does a wonderful attempt at translation, (UTF-8), however it is approximate. Hey to me what is important is Communication!

As for texting Shorthand BTW , if a message is so heavily laden with such I am afraid I just skip it. I assume I am not the audience. I think as texting gets easier and less expensive we will probably see less of that, unless there is a truly persitant audience that desires ever changing obscure texting communications. (Like encrypted codes.)

Does it speak to you?
If it does then that's communication!

So with that in mind here is my favorite translation tool FoxLingo:

If you don't already have it grab a copy of Firefox at :
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

It's worth it because here is the icing:

Grab the Firefox FoxLingo Extension at:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2444

That Extension alone is worth my weight in gold.

Now that's Communication!

Enjoy!

 

[intenex]

I wish grammar didn't matter to me. It seems programmed into our society, however, that good grammar / spelling / vocabulary is a strong indicator of intelligence. This is far from true, of course, but the correlation quite likely does exist, as grammar is indeed an indicator of education, and the highly educated come typically from good families (with good genes ).

Rep links if you like me : ) -

 

[frankfriend]

I guess that grammar matters because it is so central to successful and accurate communication in any language. If you don't use the grammar correctly, then you blur meaning, fail to communicate clearly, and just say say and hear the wrong messages. Often sloppy grammar seems to match messy thinking, and sometimes just plain laziness.
Of course grammatical usage is related closely to your educational experience, and especially reading. If your grammar is poor, then read a lot, read books rather than pulp newspapers.

Grammar differs enormously between languages as is obvious. It also seems to change over time. In fact some of the most ancient still spoken & written languages have a very simple grammar as the 'rules' have decayed over the millenia.

Best regards

 

[ViperBlade]

Grammar matters very much to me!
Splitting infinitives really bugs me, as does "should of" as opposed to "should have", etc.

Since moving to France and learning my own language from a foreigner's point of view, my grammar has severely improved, even if I do overuse commas :drool:

People saying things such as "He was the man that robbed the bank" instead of "He was the man who robbed the bank", doesn't really get to me because most people wouldn't know about that sort of thing unless they'd studied grammar.

 

[VPmase]

Its funny, most of you are just typing grammatically correct in this thread because of the discussion. I doubt most of you really type grammatically correct especially when playing games.

To me, it doesn't really matter. There are always mistakes made and I'm smart enough to get what a person is trying to say even though it doesn't really make any sense.