Typos inacurate spelling.

well, being that this is a text board, I would expect there to be typos. Spelling however, is fairly fundamental and with out the written text on these boards, there would be no ideas to discuss.

Besides, it does matter if you lack the ability to articulate your ideas, written or spoken. I am glad that most of us can see over the typos and understand our comrades' posts and aren't too hung up on every little spelling error.

Shouldn't that have been, 'without'? One word, not two.

Please note that this is not in any way meant to cause offense or to target anyone in particular - I haven't seen any of the posts this refers to, so if it is an ongoing battle, then I am not weighing in on anyone's side - this is just from my perspective.



While I rarely have the urge to correct people online (I get paid to do it for a living, so I don't give my services for free!!! ) and I agree that grammar/spelling police can be very annoying, still, some people should be ashamed of their poor command of their own language.

To be clear, I am not referring to non-native speakers or people who have genuine problems such as dyslexia, but to people who put no effort into articulating their ideas.

There are two important elements, in my opinion.

First, an internet forum is a purely text based board for communicating with other people from across the world. The grammar and the words you use directly impact upon the strength and clarity of your message. If you don't write succinctly, then you can't expect people to understand you. If your message is convoluted and the grammar is incorrect, then it is most definitely a failure on your part to convey what you mean, no different to mispronouncing a word and expecting the listener to do the work to fill in for you. Given the difficulty many people have communicating face to face, writing anonymously requires a little extra effort to ensure understanding.

Secondly, it is shameful that people do not attempt to improve upon such a critical skill. Writing is one of our species great achievements and literacy is something all societies should strive to maintain in their populace. Why do people take affront at being corrected in something they *really should already know* and *should have learned as children*? Instead, those people need to appreciate that they are being given insight into a critical flaw and one which will seriously hamper their ability to achieve in life. Perhaps instead they could be grateful (as they would be if they were using a second language and someone helped them by correcting their errors) and use it as a learning opportunity.

Pick up group looking for a rouge!!! Did you really want to put some make-up on prior to fighting those monsters?

The key problems, as I see them, are not typos but persistent spelling errors that show that the word is not truly known or that the grammar is not within their command. For example, using "loose" in place of "lose", using "would of" instead of "would've".... both of these examples are completely incorrect use of the language but it is expected that the reader should go to the effort of deciphering this, rather than the writer actually using it correctly in the first place.

The worst I have ever heard, sadly from my own brother, was on MSN. I asked my younger brother (early 20's) how he was and he responded.....

"Im not so good as i didnt slepted last night"

He is my brother, so, naturally, I tend to spend the time explaining the problem. Sometimes he listens, but generally his idea is that "everyone knows what he means" which, of course, is true.... bu ten i cud rit li ths nd ud undastan wha i men.... if you think that's acceptable then we could just go the whole hog and resort to grunting at each other and sniffing each others rears to communicate!

While I agree that the grammar police should lay off or at least make an effort of doing it constructively, the language abusers really shouldn't be attempting to take the moral high ground.

I sometimes like to pounce on typos, especially in heated arguements, especially when I run out of things to say.

OMG!    You had me spitting coffee at my monitor with that one!  

BTW...Coffee coming out of your nose doesn't burn like you might expect. Just a little thing I learned that I thought I'd pass on.   

I agree with the idea that the grammar police could lay off a bit, but we should also put some effort into making our posts readable. I hate seeing misused words too, (loose instead of lose seems to be the flavor of the month), but I think we can all look past that and try to see the post's meaning without being anal.

There must be a balance in there somewhere.

In the OP, I see the word "hate" used. I "hate" that word. So, to answer the OP, no, I don't hate the grammar police. Also, spelling and intelligence aren't related. Ignorance can be fixed.

I don't jump on anyone for typos, spelling or grammar. It just doesn't matter, here. I usually can guess, most of the time, what is trying to be communicated. Besides, for some of us, English isn't our first language. However, I must caution those that take exception to someone correcting them. Take it as constructive criticism. I work in an IT department, and deal closely with the Human Resources department. I know for a fact, that for any given job position, hundreds of resumes are received from would be candidates. The HR recruiter can't and doesn't read all of the them. The first screening process is for typos, spelling, and grammar. An error in any of these 3 categories results in your resume being sent to the circular filing cabinet. So if you are corrected here, and someone points out an error you didn't even know you were making, take it as a learning experience. It just may give you a leg up when looking for that dream job, or any job for that matter.

I heartily aree that trying to keep your spelling and grammar in order is good manners and that keeping your basic literacy in shape is nearly essential if you want to climb ranks in any professional (air conditioned) setting. It's not only for resumes, either. When all your email is relatively tight, the folks who have to read you tend to think better of you.

Nice succinct definition.

BTW How's things? You might want to give the Metaverse League a try.

People who criticize other's spelling and grammar need to be made aware of Skitt's Law. Not quite as reliable as the laws of physics, but close.

That said, I definitely tend to judge the quality of a person's opinions based on the quality of their spelling. Consider: if they're too lazy to use a spell-checker (which is built right into GalCiv2's editor, for crying out loud!) then they are probably too lazy to do enough research to have an informed opinion on the subject in question. Grammar is much more difficult to check and is less intuitive to people who did not grow up with the language, so I'm a lot more forgiving. This does not mean that I openly criticize or attempt to correct such errors; I just tend to make note of them internally. More often, I just stop reading that particular post -- I'm probably not missing much, frankly.

There are certainly exceptions to the rule. A friend of mine has a serious learning disability with the written language; reading his emails is a chore and, I hate to admit, he often comes across as a total moron. In person, however, he comes across as very intelligent and articulate. Most people do not have his excuse, and that's usually but not always obvious.

I don't, however, find it very strange that many of the people I disagree with most in these forums are often also the most atrocious spellers. In fact, GalCiv2's forums here have been quite illustrative in that regard...





"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
--Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

Hi Mumble. Things are going OK. I'm peeking in at the Core a bit; things look quiet in terms of official MVC action, and I suspect this League has a fair bit to do with that. I'd check it out in more detail, but I have the impression that it requires smaller maps and people who can happily master all the victory types. I'm on a relatively young Gigantic map now with the intent of trying for my first serious military win.

Re the OP's general theme, if not intentions, I also have to break down and post my current Top Grammar Peeve (hits me both here and in my professional work): apostrophe use has rules, and "Warn the reader that an 's' is coming up" is not one of them

That's pretty much correct. Macmatt has been working on the endgame.xml (actually that's not it's real name) but that's going to change in v1.7 anyway so yes things are quiet on the MVC front for the moment.

Regarding the usage of How's above it's clearly wrong on a number of levels. It was my fumbling attempt attempt at a colloquial usage.

What I really want to know is how the heck I got hold of Neilo's banner in reply #8.   




There, that's the one I'm looking for.

my two cents:

i care about what i say, i care at least a little about the people who read what i write, and therefore i try to aim for clarity of prose and good spelling. i had to do a lot of editing during my writing minor, so my eyes tend to be drawn to bad spelling (especially misuse of they're/their/there and it's/its). i make mistakes, and sometimes i even try to correct them before the next reply. i also thing it's important to attend to the medium of communication: irony (including sarcasm) works differently in writing than in speech.

that said, it's rare that i criticize another's writing on a board like this. for starters, if they didn't spell correctly and use conventional english grammar in the first place, they probably don't care. it's also stupid to assume that rules of grammar are any more permanent than the language they rule. language is fluid. Arthur C. Clarke suggested that language (well, specifically pronunciation) would stop evolving as a result of audio recording, but that's turned out to be less true than he thought. finally, some people don't speak english as their first language. i don't know how anyone else feels, but i think english has got to be the most convuluted language in the world. it's also english-learning people i have in mind when i focus on trying to make my writing clear.

on that note, anyone remember the two asian kids from Better Off Dead, the ones who learned to speak english by listening to baseball announcers? classic.

I think it is also important to consider the medium you are using to communicate as well. Appearance and perception play huge roles, especially in a debate on this type of forum. Don't forget you are TYPING. If you are talking with a friend or even just emailing some trivial YouTube clip, its not as important. But, spelling and grammar tend to be higher on the priorty list when you want to make that idea or point you are explaining make more sense under other circumstances. Now, I do agree with what others have already mentioned, and always pointing out typos is a little overboard. I tend to do what Ghostwes said, and if I notice a lot of mistakes or just laziness of typing that makes you seem like your 8 years old ( eg. OMGZ, my krazy l33t ship gonna blow yer azz away and ima take al your phat lewt) I start to ignore you, or not really give much weight to anything you say. In a forum where how you communicate is by typing, typos and grammar errors hurt your "image" to others. Thats just how it is.

It is similar in other aspects of life as well. When you start saving for retirement, would you take seriously a money manager who wears a wife-beater T-shirt and some grungy blue jeans? Or how about your doctor that is grossly obese giving you dietary tips? They might be the smartest people in the world, but I doubt you would think to highly of them if thats how they dressed or looked. Its all about appearance and the perceptions you give.

EDIT: And Better off Dead is one of the greatest comedies ever haha

I never jump on people because they don't spell correctly in the forum, but like others have said above, I feel that someone who is too lazy to spell correctly is probably also too lazy to be able to give good information about the game, and I have little respect for that person's abilities.

Taking the time to at least correctly spell the words in your main topic is a must. If you don't, people who use search to look up that information later will never find your post. English may not be your first language and you may not be able to spell "sesquipedalian" from memory, but for Pete's sake if you're writing about words in the game that are not that familiar to you, take a good look at the at the game screen and at least make an effort to spell those words correctly.

If you are writing about "Morale" or the "Metaverse", but you type "Moral" or "Meatverse", then yes, the people who read that thread initially will know what you mean, but once the post falls off the first few pages, nobody will ever be able to find that thread unless they make a supreme effort to find posts made by people who can't be bothered to use correct spelling.

And, when words like that are right in front of you and you are so lazy that you can't be bothered to spell them correctly, it makes you look like this guy:

  

As rusiotfh hos ptonan, omli tke forft ahd lart luffars of a wufd ate neagad far tke brion to umturskond.

Exactly.

I wondered if this thread might digress as merrily as its cousins from days past. Looks probable...



Talk about a "that depends..." context! I'm 2nd-generation counterculture. *Being* a money manager is extremely suspicious in itself. Plus I'm queer, and have a slight weakness for the wife-beater T-shirt look, so there's that whole problem (sex distracting from business) when it comes to paying for professional advice. Or, if by chance you meant a funky bull dyke money manager, I have a corrollary weakness for wanting to trust folks who shun corporate drag.

p.s. I want my two dollars!

normally that's true for me too, but this weekend was SD pride. i can't count how many gym bunnies dressed in less than wife beaters tried to sell me crap. i think i'm kinda gayed out for a while.

as for counter culture vs. conventional business presentation, my personal sense is: conventionally dressed business people are responsible but far more often they're ethically questionable; professionals dressed like surfers or skaters or punks - or average joes - are usually honest but often enough bigtime slackers.