Good grammar usage and spelling lends an air of professionalism to a post. A post that has something controversial is more likely to be taken seriously if the poster uses proper English.

Having said that, I do think some people go waaaay overboard on chastising people for misspelled words and poor grammar usage. There are many posters for whom English is not their first language, and we ought to laud them for making the effort! Not banish them to purgatory for the offense of a misspelled word or dangling participle.

If I can understand the post and the grammar/spelling is not too bad, I consider it fine.

My own pet peeve on these forums is "moral" versus "morale". Both are important concepts in GalCiv2, yet time and again people mean morale but write moral.

My own pet peeve on these forums is "moral" versus "morale".

One I see all the time on RPG forums-- "rouge" instead of rogue.

I believe we established long ago that the grammar fraktards should die.

Some of the worst offenders are gone. Beyond that, I have been forced to attack my colleagues based on their ideas instead of their spelling and grammar.

In my opinion, I'm nicer when I'm criticizing spelling and grammar.

I believe the so called "grammar Nazi" is out of place on forums of this nature, and only serve to inflame and incite silly arguments. Its a gamers forum, not a PhD dissertation. The self seeking Nanny Brigade are becoming far too prevalent these days, and I for one want to get away from the freaks in my time off, not get pounded by self seeking comments, and picky silly comments that add nothing to the topic in hand.

Attention to detail in writing and expression are without doubt very important in the workplace - in some utterly essential - but outside of work, no, forget it. We are here to relax and have a bit of fun not go back to school, particularly when more often than not the base motivation for such comment is more to do with creating impressions, not genuine grammar correction.

I guess my tank is now full of individuals telling me what is good for me, what is bad for me, what to eat, what not to eat, what to drink (even so called natural mineral water that does not pass current health standards) yaddie yadda. Nope, I get enough of that claptrap when at work without listening to it in my free time.

In my free time, I just want to play a game, have a friendly chat etc - is that now out of reach? Sadly its an increasingly rhetorical question.

Sigh   

Regards
Zy

I guess my point is that I'd rather see good nannies than dedicated "nazis." Mary Poppins surely understood that the children just wanted to be understood, and sometimes that means telling them how to spell "understood." But it *doesn't* mean spending hundreds of words excoriating them for typing "undrstood" in a casual forum.

Is that too backwards a way of asking the grammar nazi crowd to mellow out but not quit asking when they can't understand a post? If you ask nicely, it shouldn't ever hurt to request clarification in a written public chat like this.

excoriating

OK you're just showing off here.   

Grammar Nazi's serve a purpose, but it couldn't hurt for them to be nice

Seems to me this is a reasonable attitude to take. GW said pretty much the same, he just used more words to do it.   

"...well, they wanted some more land"

Say that to someone who lived in one of the European countries overrun by Germany during WWII and see how long it takes for them to punch you in the nose. Then read up on your history of the Third Reich.

Did I mis-spell anything?

However, Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits might argue with you.

[shameless plug]

Fire Fox 2 has built in spell checking!

[/shameless plug]

I think that one should formost keep in mind that the context of the post is most important. Second in importance is that the post be understandable related to the context they are addressing. Third, one should write the best English one knows. A responder should respond in like manner, meaning that correcting English, whether spelling or grammar should be as part of a post, not the point of the post.

I think "grammar nazi's", or people who have been taught to speak reasonable English (whichever you prefer), tend to only really go off when somebody either A)hit's a peeve such as Wheel's 'moral' or B)The English is so horrendous that it truly retracts from the post. When I see a single spelling mistake that's not a game term, I usually just let it slip; however, when there are profuse grammatical errors, I take the person's post all that less seriously. If you can take the time to think of an idea that's worth writing, you can take the extra minute's worth of time to put it in decent enough English. Also, it's usually pretty clear when somebody is not native to the English language versus someone who has twelve year old instant messenger grammar. The former usually misplaces an article, or makes some mistake based on how the Latin context would sound. The latter usually avoids using punctuation, complete sentences, and honestly they actually make more spelling errors (which I think is sad).