Proper English

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  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    PJamGrunge10 wrote:
    On most posts I see someone misuses "there", "their", and "they're". It's very annoying and not hard to understand.


    Also, people seem to think that should've is "should of"....I don't like that either.

    Haha, "should of" I've never seen that.

    Someone on this forum says becos, I think it's done deliberately though.

    The there, their, they're thing is a really common mistake.

    The tutrh is, as lnog as the fisrt and lsat letetrs are in the rgiht pcale aytninhg is radealbe. Jsut not as ncie to look at.

    I've found through typing, if I am typing really fast, I tend to use the wrong there/their/they're and I'm jsut too lzay to crorcet it.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Curious
    Curious Posts: 732
    I could not agree more with the 'would of, should of, could of' point. I know when spoken the words 'would have' could quite possibly sound similar to 'would of', but that is no excuse.

    My personal pet peeve is the ongoing trend to leave out perfectly good spaces between words:

    atleast
    suchas
    eachother

    And the biggest offender of all 'alot'. A lot is two damned words! I used to notice just the occasional misuse of 'alot', but its use seems to be becoming more and more prevalent.

    **Disclaimer: This post is probably full of grammatical errors, this ALWAYS happens when I rant about mistakes.
    "The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Einstein
  • Abookamongstthemany
    Abookamongstthemany Posts: 8,209
    Curious wrote:

    **Disclaimer: This post is probably full of grammatical errors, this ALWAYS happens when I rant about mistakes.

    letting you know the rant probably wasn't worth it in the first place :p
    If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

    Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
    -Oscar Wilde
  • Curious
    Curious Posts: 732
    Abookamongstthemany wrote:
    letting you know the rant probably wasn't worth it in the first place :p

    Well I know that, but if I stop ranting about the small stuff I might have to start worrying about stuff that matters. The petty is a nice distraction.
    "The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Einstein
  • Abookamongstthemany
    Abookamongstthemany Posts: 8,209
    Curious wrote:
    Well I know that, but if I stop ranting about the small stuff I might have to start worrying about stuff that matters. The petty is a nice distraction.

    That it is. :D
    If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

    Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
    -Oscar Wilde
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    Curious wrote:
    I could not agree more with the 'would of, should of, could of' point. I know when spoken the words 'would have' could quite possibly sound similar to 'would of', but that is no excuse.

    My personal pet peeve is the ongoing trend to leave out perfectly good spaces between words:

    atleast
    suchas
    eachother

    And the biggest offender of all 'alot'. A lot is two damned words! I used to notice just the occasional misuse of 'alot', but its use seems to be becoming more and more prevalent.

    **Disclaimer: This post is probably full of grammatical errors, this ALWAYS happens when I rant about mistakes.

    I used to think alot and atleast were right. But I know better now. Unfortunately sometimes I still do it by accident.

    Sometimes is one word right? lol
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • fanch75
    fanch75 Posts: 3,734
    I'm gonna lern you a good'un!
    Do you remember Rock & Roll Radio?
  • carolinabeerguy
    carolinabeerguy Kernersville, NC Posts: 2,517
    I become a bit peeved as well when the English language is butchered. Misspellings annoy me to no end as well. This website comes in quite handy: http://dictionary.reference.com/
    I wish I was as fortunate, as fortunate as me.
  • small town beck
    small town beck Posts: 6,691
    Once upon a time the manager of where I worked use to write on the white board and it was HORRIBLE!! He always added an apostrophe to anything that was plural. Drove me nuts. He was from Cape Breton and he once sent us a postcard from there and he spelled Cape Breton wrong :eek: WTF? ... and this guy was a manager
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    small town beck wrote:
    Once upon a time the manager of where I worked use to write on the white board and it was HORRIBLE!! He always added an apostrophe to anything that was plural. Drove me nuts. He was from Cape Breton and he once sent us a postcard from there and he spelled Cape Breton wrong :eek: WTF? ... and this guy was a manager

    Hey I knew a guy from Cape Breton, he wasn't very smart either. Must be something in the water, eh?
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • small town beck
    small town beck Posts: 6,691
    Ahnimus wrote:
    Hey I knew a guy from Cape Breton, he wasn't very smart either. Must be something in the water, eh?

    I don't think the gene pool is deep enough :p
  • seanw1010
    seanw1010 Posts: 1,205
    ize gonna try to speakd bester now that i seen a worlded wide web page tellzing me to.

    the truth is, many americans have never been taught proper english because they were too poor.

    now, where can we get a huge sum of money from towards teaching illiterates *cough* iraq war *cough*
    they call them fingers, but i never see them fing. oh, there they go
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    seanw1010 wrote:
    ize gonna try to speakd bester now that i seen a worlded wide web page tellzing me to.

    the truth is, many americans have never been taught proper english because they were too poor.

    now, where can we get a huge sum of money from towards teaching illiterates *cough* iraq war *cough*

    Good point, I learned most of my language skills on my own. I've actually learned several languages mostly on my own, including Java, PHP, Visual Basic, C/C++ and German. I'm an autodidact! Who needs school?
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
    The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
    And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
    Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
    5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
    Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
    The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
    Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
    And smale foweles maken melodye,
    10 That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
    (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
    Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
    And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
    To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
    15 And specially from every shires ende
    Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
    The hooly blisful martir for to seke
    That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke....


    See, who needs Standard English? All you need to do is speak those words aloud, even if you don't know the right pronunciation, and you gauge a sense of sound and beauty and imagination, through language. And you get a sense of meaning, too!
  • dkst0426
    dkst0426 Posts: 523
    PJamGrunge10 wrote:
    Also, people seem to think that should've (or should have...is should've even a real word? :p) is "should of"....I don't like that either.
    Curious wrote:
    I could not agree more with the 'would of, should of, could of' point. I know when spoken the words 'would have' could quite possibly sound similar to 'would of', but that is no excuse.

    I want to hug you both. There's this one guy on another message board I go to, and he uses that incessantly. I've asked him about it before, and his excuse is that it was what he was taught, which has tempted me to ask him to go get his money back from his teachers. Ridiculous.

    I'll freely admit to being a grammar and spelling Nazi. It irks me to no end to see frequent misspelling, bad punctuation, and the apparent inability to use the Shift key to capitalize properly. Furthermore, we've seen the rise of the new generation that speaks Textese. You know: U hv to txt me bck asap b4 9, k? Plz. How lazy can we get that vowels become optional in our written communication? Blah. It's hair-ripping-inducing.

    Personally, I find it much harder to type that crap than it would be to type as I was taught how to. And someone posted back on an earlier page that it's not as if people who have bad grammar can't articulate their points. I beg to differ. While there are some who are still somehow able to get their point across, when something's written in bad English, it's hard to figure out what someone's trying to say, and it gets hard to keep the discussion going.

    And another thing--to those of you in school or in other professional vocations and jobs. Do yourselves a favor and please learn to start writing well. I mean that in all seriousness. Bad habits are hard to break, and it amazes me how badly some adults write nowadays.
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    It's also a good idea to learn how to touch type. Might I suggest "Typing of the Dead" by Sega?

    I've been able to master touch typing up to 80 WPM using that program and it was fun killing zombies at the same time.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    dkst0426 wrote:
    It irks me to no end to see frequent misspelling, bad punctuation, and the apparent inability to use the Shift key to capitalize properly.

    Good use of the word "irk". I really like that word, and not just because it's the last three letters of my last name.

    An additional tip is that all numerical expressions no greater than nine should be written in full. E.g. One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, etc..
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Smellyman2
    Smellyman2 Posts: 689
    How come Brits don't pronounce R's or other letters like the T in water. It often comes out wa'er?


    Grammatical things really bug me too (see I could've said "also" so "too" would be proper also. :) ). English is pretty f'd up anyway w/ rules on top of rules w/ exceptions etc, so depending on how much education one has, or if they even care, English is always going to be screwed up.
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    Smellyman wrote:
    How come Brits don't pronounce R's or other letters like the T in water. It often comes out wa'er?


    Grammatical things really bug me too (see I could've said "also" so "too" would be proper also. :) ). English is pretty f'd up anyway w/ rules on top of rules w/ exceptions etc, so depending on how much education one has, or if they even care, English is always going to be screwed up.

    "I" before "E", except after "C" and in words like "Neighbor" and "Weigh".

    Weird is just a weird word.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • hippiemom
    hippiemom Posts: 3,326
    dkst0426 wrote:
    And someone posted back on an earlier page that it's not as if people who have bad grammar can't articulate their points. I beg to differ. While there are some who are still somehow able to get their point across, when something's written in bad English, it's hard to figure out what someone's trying to say, and it gets hard to keep the discussion going.
    I couldn't help but think of our own dear pychosinlove when I read this :D It was like a puzzle most of the time, trying to figure out what the hell he was on about. He certainly did liven the place up though!
    "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ MLK, 1963

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