SPELLING!!

[CP5415]

This has been brought up before!
Don't we have anything better to worry about?

Gordon

[tstage]

Sorry, guys. I'm going to have to side with Mark and Wayne on this.

I'm not a 'rivet counter'. Nor am I going to sit around and count every misspelled word so I can send a note home to your parents. I struggle with even conveying my own thoughts down on paper to stoop to that. I do take the extra time to proofread what I have written before I send a reply or post out. Even then, one or two things may still fall through the cracks.

I can overlook a misspelled word. It's the lack of punctuation and proper capitalization that makes a few posts VERY (capitalized for emphasis) difficult to read.

Remember the adage:

"Only the mediocre are always at their best."

C'mon, guys! We put so much time and effort into our layouts. Can't we just put a little more effort into making our posts more legible to one another?

Tom

[ben10ben]

"life is toooooo short to be worried about it here."

Life is too short to spend it trying to read through a post that's poorly spelled, with poor grammar, and other problems.

Spelling errors don't bother me so much(although I'll admit that I do notice them, as well as making them myself) as word spellings that are totally off(i.e. "prolly" rather than "probably", or other such errors), or grammar that is horrible. I also think that short hand abbreviations, like "ur" rather than "you are" make something extremely difficult to read. All caps, although they do bother me, aren't nearly as bad as using all lower case letters.

The worst error, though, in my opinion, is seeing a solid block of text. If I see a post that goes on and on and on and on without having any line breaks or any such thing causes my eyes to glaze over, and I will likely skip the post regardless of how good the content is. As I said earlier, I have more important things to do in life than try and decipher a difficult to read post.

[n2mopac]

Well, I think the continual reappearance of this subject is rediculous. The fact is these forums are more like conversation than formal writing. I myself hold a master's degree and do much formal writing for a living, but in an informal setting such as this I certainly hit some wrong keys and make mistakes. I do not have all day to spend on this forum, thus I do not closely proof read everything I write. If you do not have anything better to do than to critique spelling on an informal model railroading forum you should really think about subscribing to a forum for English majors instead.
Ron

[tatans]

I tried to read one letter about a month ago and could not understand three of the words in the note, I actually thought it was a joke, until they replied to the original question, I only wish I would have saved it. Remember, 80 % of spelling is learned before grade six.

[Anonymous]

i CANET SPEEL AND i REELY DONT CARE

[twhite]

It's spelled grammAr. A, not E.

[dave9999]

Hey Mark,
It's Funk and Wagnalls..... Dave

[Anonymous]

Hello Mark,

I believe there was another Mark that said he didn't care much for those people that lacked the creativity to spell a word more than just the one way.

[willy6]

the people on this forum that look for spelling mistakes are "rivet counters'

[Anonymous]

I agree. There are a lot of spelling mistakes. I also really don't see why some people TYPE ALL CAPITALS. It kind of bothers me.

[Anonymous]

Karl, I'm breathing fine! This is the internet! It is internationally published!

It must be because life is too short, nobody takes the time to do simple things anymore!

[Paul W. Beverung]

Bergi; Give us spell check , PLEASE.

Paul

[Anonymous]

I kind of agree with both Mark and Karl to some degree. I hate to be critical of other posters' spelling and grammar, though sometimes the amount and variety of mistakes are just too painful to read. I do tend to skip over the posts that simply ignore capitaliization and basic punctuation and uses cutsy spelling like "ur" for "your," all of which limits my interest in hearing what they have to say. Just my preference, but there is a reason why basic English conventions have survived all these years..

On the other hand, I'm glad people are posting here and through writing, will improve their skills.

Wayne

By the way, I think "miss-spellings" was misspelled. :)

[rexhea]

Edit: I decided to change my smart mouth response to say that it is a common and an accepted practice to abbreviate, hyphenate, use acronyms, SMILLIES, or whatever to communicate a feeling of 1on1in forums, emails, chat rooms, or whatever on the internet. Your right, I didn't include spelling and grammar, but when the response is usually hurried and to the point, people are simply conveying their thoughts in writing, who cares. I have yet to see a post I couldn't read. Save the grammar and spelling for the class room or work.

Let's relax here! Close enough is acceptable.

[railman]

this is the internet...but yeah, just reading the post before hitting "submit reply" should catch most of the grammar mistakes. Like writing sentences that look similar to this.

[Anonymous]

Mark
Please take a deep breath and relax! You said it yourself, this is the internet. Its not like it's a national publication. We're all friends here, and life is toooooo short to be worried about it here.[:D]
The national magazines make spelling and grammatical mistakes and for the most part, nobody notices it. Nobody except for maybe the people who are very close to the subject material. [:0]

Huked on foniks werked fur me![(-D]

[Anonymous]

I am not a teacher! I was a horrible speller before I started writing documents for a living, back when you knew something was miss-spelled, but were too lazy to look it up in your Funk & Wagnals! Now, with the internet, it's so easy to make sure things are spelled correctly, there really is no excuse. I know this has been mentioned many, many times before. I think with most of you, if you would just read back to yourself what you have written, you would catch most of the miss-spellings. Also, for free, you can down-load ieSpell and have a spell checker for your browser, why wouldn't anyone do this?!?

What you are writing here is literally going out to the world for the world to see! Isn't it important for the world to see your best spelling and try to do the best with your grammar?

You people whom American English is not your primary language have an excuse and are exempt.

If I'm stepping on toes, so be it, but I think we need to do better!