Reading internet forums is ruining my writing

[1lowlife]

Originally Posted by Bucc5207

sdprof, do not let the bad habits of others influence you! Hold your course and continue to lead by example. Stay in the fight!

I try to restrain my inner grammar Nazi, but sometimes I just cannot hold back. Other times I simply refuse to respond to a particularly egregious post. If a poster won't expend the energy to communicate clearly, I have no obligation to try to decode his or her nonsense.

Well stated..

[Gigantor]

Grammar and Spelling 101

Please learn the differences between the following:

lose, loose (I see this error a lot on this forum)
there, their, they're
an, and
of, have
your, you're, yore
where, wear, ware, we're, were
to, too
its, it's
who's, whose
hi, high
fair, fare

Sometimes I miss Cannibul.

[john_bud]

Originally Posted by slugger6

As a college professor I see the adverse impact of texting, tweeting, etc. in the written work of my students. Compare the writing of today with that of a century ago. We are far less eloquent today.

Wha chew tak'n bout?


Oh and don't forget that schools are minimizing (and dropping) cursive writing. My 13 year old can barely write his own name legibly.

[Bucc5207]

Originally Posted by Gigantor

Grammar and Spelling 101

Please learn the differences between the following:

lose, loose (I see this error a lot on this forum)
there, their, they're
an, and
of, have
your, you're, yore
where, wear, ware, we're, were
to, too
its, it's
who's, whose
hi, high
fair, fare

Sometimes I miss Cannibul.

You forgot site and sight

[sdprof]

Originally Posted by br0ck

I'm really bad at it. I used to be great at punctuation, grammar and spelling, but since learning Spanish several years back and all of this internet forum chat... it has really gone to pot. Like right there! I use the damn elipsis (...) for pauses in speech when I should be using a comma or other forms of punctuation. If you don't use it... you lose it! So what do you suggest to get people back on track? A good old fashion English Comp text book? Retaking an English course? Those of you who have never lost it have it easy. What about those of us who lost it years ago?

You obviously have a solid background, you know what ellipsesare!

First and best advice, though I'm sure those who need it most won't read this, is stop and reread your post before hitting the send button. It's still hard to spot all the tricky errors, because one cannot reliably proof-read their own writing. You know what it's supposed to say, so you pass over the mistakes. Just like that picture recently posted in Funny Pictures with the phrase, "I've got a dig bick."

Spell check! Firefox has it built in, I see red squiggly underlines all the time as I post here. And I go back and correct them. It seems IE doesn't have the spell check, and I don't know about Chrome or Opera or Safari. For those posting from small mobile devices, it seems the spell check/automatic correction can be as much to blame for miscommunication as the author.

Gigantor: you left off
then, than
except, accept

"Write as you speak. Assuming, of course, that you speak well."
Tongue and Quill (Air Force Guide to Speaking and Writing)

[sdprof]

Originally Posted by Bucc5207

You forgot site and sight

I had those in my original post. Don't forget cite, as well.

[Medic738]

Mine is terrible but 99% of my posts are from my iPhone.

[omarimoe]

I have always been very sloppy with forum posts until someone posted something about my grammatical ugliness lol. now i try to keep a mild handle on it.

[MFE]

People say "it's just the internet". I say, if you're taking the time to write something, then you're doing it with the intent of having somebody read it. Pay yourself the respect of making it worthy of the effort, and pay your readers the respect of making it as easy as possible.

[Bonehead]

effect / affect