Good spelling and grammar

03-08-2005, 19:38

I started this thread mainly to ask your opinion and also to open a discussion on the importance of accurate spelling and grammar generally. I'm usually not a person who fusses about detail etc however something that always tends to get me is poor spelling and grammar. This may be ignorant of me but I am always disappointed to find misuse of language and spelling and it often makes me cringe when it's really bad - it's just something I view with quite high importance, does anybody feel the same, or has spelling or grammar accuracy become irrelevant as long as the point is put across clearly?

English is an awkward language when it comes to spelling as it is not very phonetic. Whereas in languages like Italian where every word is spelt exactly as it is pronounced, English has so many words which are only pronouncable because of memory e.g. iron, bomb, listen, awkward, book, you will be able to think of plenty of words like this. It is always saddening to see non native English speakers who have learnt the language to be able to spell better then many native English people who do seem to neglect spelling

Spelling seems to be an issue that many people forget or abandon, either because of laziness or because they don't class it as important, which is of course understandable. The main mistakes are words with double letters i.e. disappointment and assistant, but the list goes on. Many words which we use even on a daily are often misspelt by us, I saw somebody spell important as 'inportant' today which rather shocked me. Of course there are excuses for spelling difficulties i.e. dyslexia which mean that people are unable to spell correctly.

I also see grammatical errors constantly, the biggest of these is past participles which is a killer in the English language, I'd hazard a guess at saying that they are misused up to 50% of the time when English is spoken. (e.g. I have ate should be I have eaten - I ate an apple is a completely different tense altogether.) - I have wrote = I have written, etc... But still, the point is expressed and that is what matters, some might say. Other common errors include when people use the tense 'If I was rich', which is wrong because people should say 'If I were rich'. May seem quite pedantic here but when you think about it, this means that most people who use this are wrong, because I am constantly hearing 'If I was', which is actually referred to the past tense e.g. If I was being silly just tell me.

In no way am I feeling disrespect for people who trip on the above, after all that is advanced grammar to be correct in (well, in English anyway, it would be quite trivial in other languages). However, does anybody else agree that reading a well written text with spelling and grammatical accuracy is always quite nice and more respectful to our mother tongue?

Roy MM · 03-08-2005, 19:54

Shouldn't this be in pet moans & hates

idi banashapan · 03-08-2005, 19:57

Diamond, I totally agree with you!

marky · 03-08-2005, 20:00

spoken english is a wonderfull thing different accents an all that

we all live in a small country with so much variety its brill

**Russ** · 03-08-2005, 20:02

Welsh is easier

marky · 03-08-2005, 20:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russ D

Welsh is easier

ok then boyo or is that duck

**Russ** · 03-08-2005, 20:05

Erm....quack?

**Maggy J** · 03-08-2005, 20:07

Ach! This smacks of work..

punky · 03-08-2005, 20:10

I guess I am one of the people in your crosshairs here.

I am not brilliant at English, i'll freely admit that. I only got a C for English Language and Literature. However, I always try to make my posts as grammatically correct and as coherent as possible. I make a lot of mistakes, which isn't helped by my dyslexia. It isn't a case of just reading it through after you finish typing. I can read my post 10 times over, and each time, my brain will mentally skip over my mistakes. Come back 30 minutes later, and I spot an error, sometimes quite big (this is why so many of my posts have edit timestamps). Sometimes I will just skip a random word, or sometimes substitute dyslexic 'mix-words' like through and thought. I may not get it right all the time, but I do try my best. I am sure this carries through to a lot of other people on here.

At the end of the day, spelling and grammar is largely irrelevent. It is the post meaning which should matter, not if someone says "could of" whereas it should be "could have".

marky · 03-08-2005, 20:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russ D

Erm....quack?

**Russ** · 03-08-2005, 20:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by punky

At the end of the day, spelling and grammar is largely irrelevent. It is the post meaning which should matter, not if someone says "could of" whereas it should be "could have".

That's something which REALLY annoys me, along with "should of" and "would of".

Quick confession: in the past I've been known to quietly edit people's posts to correct it when they do the above

03-08-2005, 20:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russ D

Welsh is easier

Welsh is lovely to listen to, I wouldn't like to try to learn to spell it, though. However, as already said, English is tremendously illogical in the way it is spelt.

I find the spoken word to be the main casualty of poor grammar, even txt spk is, arguably, bad spelling, rather than poor grammar. 'Can you borrow me a pound', being a particular pet hate.

/runs spell check

03-08-2005, 20:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russ D

Welsh is easier

As you mention Welsh, if one thinks about English and how over the centuries it has developed and has adopted vocabulary including words from: Latin, Greek, French, Norse, German, American English, Chinese, Hindi etc it's rather fascinating that despite the proximty of Welsh, Scots Gaelic and of course Irish that for some reason no words appear to have been borrowed and absorbed into English - now there's something to think about! if there are remind me.

**Russ** · 03-08-2005, 20:16

Welsh is easier to learn than English. There are no silent letters and no confusingly similar words which sound different, such as trough/through etc.

03-08-2005, 20:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by punky

I guess I am one of the people in your crosshairs here.

I am not brilliant at English, i'll freely admit that. I only got a C for English Language and Literature. However, I always try to make my posts as grammatically correct and as coherent as possible. I make a lot of mistakes, which isn't helped by my dyslexia. It isn't a case of just reading it through after you finish typing. I can read my post 10 times over, and each time, my brain will mentally skip over my mistakes. Come back 30 minutes later, and I spot an error, sometimes quite big (this is why so many of my posts have edit timestamps). Sometimes I will just skip a random word, or sometimes substitute dyslexic 'mix-words' like through and thought. I may not get it right all the time, but I do try my best. I am sure this carries through to a lot of other people on here.

You are making an effort which is always worth kudos, and I swear I would never have said you were dyslexic, I have never noticed mistakes in your posts before.

Quote:

Originally Posted by punky

"could of" whereas it should be "could have".

Ach, got to mention that one.