*Looks sheepish*
Although I whine a little on here about some people's obsession with proper grammar and spelling. I feel I must admit that if I bought a book and there were spelling mistakes and incorrect grammar, (if I noticed it that is), then I would probably be a little miffed. I accept defeat in this battle and will try to improve the quality of my posts.


But I also accept that some people are more skilled in this matter than others and the quality of someone's grasp of the English language should never detract from what they have to say.
( girlinthehole, Sat 17 May 2008, 18:53, 12 replies)

Jeez!
It would have to be pretty bad spelling etc if you couldn't understand what they were saying.
( girlinthehole, Sat 17 May 2008, 18:58, closed)

Not everyone has had a quality education.
As long as someone has something good to say and has made the effort, I think this is more important than their ability to punctuate.


I think this website is in danger of becoming a bastion of the middle class, albeit extremely funny middle class.
( girlinthehole, Sat 17 May 2008, 19:05, closed)

The middle-class are funny
but not in the way they think they are.

Anyway; I've always looked at it as a balance of effort.

The more effort somebody puts into writing something, the easier it is for the reader to read.

If the writer puts in little effort, it becomes more difficult to work out what they mean.

If someone's got something that is important to read, I think they should make it easier to read.

I don't want to have to decipher someone's message. Especially if it's not something of great importance.
( Thinker, Sat 17 May 2008, 20:15, closed)

I'm proud of being middle class
However, I do not think that it is entirely the preserve of the middle and upper classes to receive a good education.

Sadly in recent years it has become more and more accepted to allow poor quality English in the interests of greater accessibility.

What utter crap.

Everyone has a right to a good education in the UK.

By making good grammar the preserve of those with financial access to a decent education opportunities are being removed from all.


Education is the route out of one's class.

And on that point I do have some experience...both my parents came from traditional working class backgrounds - my father didn't even own a pair of underpants until he joined the army at 15 back in the 1950s. My grandmother still lives in a council flat and my uncles all went down the pits (before Thatcher shut them down).

I was the first member of my family, on both sides, to go into Higher Education. The first one to get a degree.

And how?

Because I got a scholarship...but not from the government - they'd stopped them. I got mine from a charity.

Education is our right...the right of all.

And I for one will not stop complaining about poor standards of grammar and spelling wherever I see it because it's precious and something we all deserve.


/alcohol fuelled rant over.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Sat 17 May 2008, 21:16, closed)

.
I agree with BGB's sentiments, but nowadays, we have automated spelling checkers and grammar checkers (e.g. 'Word' or Firefox dictionary plug-ins), so there isn't an excuse anymore.

I was brought up in a European School where I shared my education with pupils from other language streams. As there’d be so much cross-cultural contact, our grasp of our mother tongue languages would acquire features from other languages (needless to say, multi-lingual word play can be fun). When studying science or humanities subjects, our school’s policy was to not care about the spelling as long as what you said was clear and unambiguous. This pragmatic approach is something that I believe in, but as I said, automated checkers are widely available.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s more the content than the spelling that matters, but often (though I have come across many exceptions), poor spelling can be seen as a warning of poor quality content. When it comes to people using ‘txt-spk’ outside of text-messages, it often says that person does not make much effort with anything. However, certain typos (especially in real-time chat) can tell something about the person at the other end. If letters from the above keyboard-row appear, the person has long fingernails. If other adjacent letters appear for no reason, the person has big fingers. Out-of-order letters indicate the hands aren’t properly co-ordinated, and missing letters indicate a worn-out keyboard. Or in the case of people excessively pressing keys on the bottom keyboard-row, it could be a woman with large boobs leaning over the keyboard.

Occasionally, I get eloquent but badly spelled e-mails. This balance between thoughtfulness and bad spelling can shed some light on the author. Also, when being in contact with foreign-language speakers, any mistakes they make when trying to speak or write English can teach me a bit about their own language. It’s an interesting experience reading French people write English with French grammar. Your mind switches to parsing the vocabulary using the rules of one language while parsing the grammar using the rules of another language, and besides, I think that it sounds cute. But people who use Chav-speak when not being ironic are clearly idiots.

As an admirer of Chickenlady’s posts, I for one will be taking any advice she dishes out.


Re: balance of effort: My sentiments exactly.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Sat 17 May 2008, 21:19, closed)

And another thing
The recent fucking shower of MPs we've had over the last two decades quite happily got their education for free - either because the bastards were loaded or else because they were bright and got into Grammar schools....

Then they pulled up the draw-bridge behind them.

Free university education? Oh, fuck off, we've got ours the rest of you can piss in the wind.

Decent secondary school education? Can't afford to pay? What a shame...why don't you move to a nice area - Tunbridge Wells maybe....where the house prices require a job that pays enough to purchase a small castle each month...

Yep, we've had our bit now the rest of you can get lost.

Bastards. Utter, utter bastards.


*EDIT* It has been suggested that the above rant should be printed onto scratchy parchment, rolled up and shoved up the arse of the current education secretary on the end of a pike......

Can you guess who made that suggestion?

Many thanks PJM x
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Sat 17 May 2008, 21:29, closed)

Massively agree
With Ancrenne's post reference precision esp. commas etc below.
One we used at school - Using the sentence:
"I punched him in the eye yesterday"
You can drop the word "only" into this sentence in 8 different places - You can make the sentence mean 8 different things by where in the sentence the word is placed.
Apologies for excitement and errors - As all the books mentioned show, words are important and should be used well.
I'll get my coat.
(onefishtwofish Redfishbluefish, Sat 17 May 2008, 22:17, closed)

Let us all just agree that....
Spelling and grammar is the cherry on the cake of B3ta members posts. Doesn't mean we can't enjoy the lovely scrumptious cake though, does it?


Oops! did I mention cake again.

Btw. I was also flung into the middle classes by my education but unfortunately it was fine art so my grammar is still shit.
( girlinthehole, Sun 18 May 2008, 7:54, closed)

I could
go on about how spelling and grammar are more the important ingredients and guidelines for the cake - don't want to mix up bitter and butter in our cake.....and lack of grammar could cause us to cock up the recipe entirely.

But that would just be me arguing for the sake of arguing (something I am quite fond of at times).

Ultimately I believe that spelling and grammar are our tools; they help us to be understood....when I say erudite I want everyone to know that I'm not talking about a particularly good glue used for model-making.

However most of the time the average b3ta member does make themselves understood by all of us....and certainly those who repeatedly make it to the Best page (Frankspencer, Legless, The Resident Loon, Humpty, et al) have a mastery over language, so much so that it's a pleasure to read their posts.

But the occasional misplaced apostrophe, one too many commas, a misspelt word? If it doesn't really change the meaning then I don't pay any attention - I read for meaning and not for marking (unless of course I am marking and then I'm not doing that on b3ta).
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Sun 18 May 2008, 10:23, closed)