Illiteracy on Boards.ie

ButtermilkJack

After spending more and more time on boards recently I've noticed the growing number of people with very poor spelling and grammer. At first I put this down to a mixture of things, including foreign users, typos (people in a hurry...), laziness and so on. However, it seems more and more people have very serious problems when trying to piece together sentences in order to explain things clearly.

Now I'm aware nobody's perfect (I'm sure somebody's spotted something out of sync in this post ) but it really annoys me when I'm reading through posts and I have to hit the back button for fear of getting a headache trying to read broken english.

Why I'm posting is because I would like to know if anyone else feels the same way. It's a very worrying trend to see developing amongst, what I would generally assume, is a young age group.

Is it an education issue, or an 'MTV/Playstation' issue?

6ix

ButtermilkJack wrote:

After spending more and more time on boards recently I've noticed the growing number of people with very poor spelling and grammer.

It's 'grammar'. Sorry, I'm hungover and I felt like being anal.

ratboy

i suck at typing and make mistakes that way, i hate text language though, that's just disgraceful desecration of a language.

Karoma

Good lord! The rod up your butt must have a rod up it's butt!
People in glass houses and all that..

There is a limit to what I'll tolerate. At th end of the day,however, if it's unreadable it's no loss.. I just move on. I suggest you do likewise (Unless you'd like to school some of the lusers??)

Don't blame a particular generation - idiocy is far more common than to be generation-specific.

Although, txtspeak does make me roll my eyes..

landser

ButtermilkJack wrote:

Is it an education issue, or an 'MTV/Playstation' issue?

some people are just plain thick.

MrJoeSoap

Illiteracy is the inability to read or write. I don't think you'd get very far on boards if you were "illiterate".

landser

Karoma wrote:

(Unless you'd like to school some of the lusers??)

.

God, this is like being in ironic heaven.

Karoma

MrJoeSoap wrote:

Illiteracy is the inability to read or write. I don't think you'd get very far on boards if you were "illiterate".

How do you know that there aren't illiterate people staring at this page right now? Trying (in vain) to work out what it means - they cannot respond of course.. you're mean...real mean.

faigs

I think its a matter of haste - most people use this website as a quick source for information and just want to get a message across quickly. As long as that happens they don't worry about grammar and spelling. I don't think its an academic essay we're all writing!

Karoma

landser wrote:

God, this is like being in ironic heaven.

..biscuit's in the post..

MrJoeSoap

Karoma wrote:

How do you know that there aren't illiterate people staring at this page right now? Trying (in vain) to work out what it means - they cannot respond of course.. you're mean...real mean.

Why would they want to respond if they had no idea what it says? Also why this page? They couldn't see it was a thread about illiteracy now could they?

Karoma

/bangs head against solid substance..

Firewalkwithme

MrJoeSoap wrote:

Why would they want to respond if they had no idea what it says? Also why this page? They couldn't see it was a thread about illiteracy now could they?

He didn't say they wanted to, just that they couldn't.

el Bastardo

What's funny is that some people are actually proud of the fact that they can't spell. I've seen the same on other UK/US-based boards.

Karoma

el Bastardo wrote:

..on other UK/US-based boards.

Oh no you didn't!!


Got an example of someone being "proud" of their inability to spell? I've seen plenty of examples of users simply being indifferent or refusing to make an effort,but never quite as far as "proud".

blah

actually while poor spelling gets on my nerves the most annoying thing i find literacywise is those people with poor grammar skills who refuse to punctuate not a single full stop comma or apostophe to be seen combined with poor spelling its something which makes a post very difficult dare i say impossible to understand

Karoma

Actually, what is annoying is not the odd full-stop,or comma,or whatever going missing - it's when it's a HUGE block of unindented/unbroken text without and grammar.. but like I said, my reaction is to simply backtrack and ignore the post.

ButtermilkJack

Wow! I can't believe the response to this thread, so many replies in so little time :eek:

6ix wrote:

It's 'grammar'. Sorry, I'm hungover and I felt like being anal.

I knew I'd make at least one Fair play!

Karoma wrote:

Good lord! The rod up your butt must have a rod up it's butt!
People in glass houses and all that..

LOL! I love it! Although I'm not too beat up over this, it was more an observation than a rant I think (...I hope)

faigs wrote:

... I don't think its an academic essay we're all writing!

Ok, fair enough, and I don't expect people to spend ages making sure they have dotted their i's and crossed their t's so to speak. It would just be nice to be able to read things as quickly as people like to type them

Anyway, great response. Some good points!

Praetorian

This thread is pointless really. There are countless people on boards who can't spell and that aren't great at grammar. Sure there are lots of mistakes on this thread, but I'm not going to be sad enough to point them all out.

To the original poster: It comes down to laziness, education, bad habits, foreign users who may only speak English as their second language, young kids and teenagers with “txt” on their brains etc etc etc. It’s the same on all bulletin boards; although I heard the posters on grammar-nazis.com always write perfect English.

If you can understand what a person is trying to say that’s the most important thing. If you have a problem reading less than perfectly written English then go read Shakespeare. We don’t need grammar nazi’s insulting people just for kicks.

Pigman II

MrJoeSoap wrote:

Illiteracy is the inability to read or write. I don't think you'd get very far on boards if you were "illiterate".

Theres more to it than that afaik. For example if you don't know how to write a cheque correctly then you also technically illiterate.

ButtermilkJack

Praetorian wrote:

...If you can understand what a person is trying to say that’s the most important thing. If you have a problem reading less than perfectly written English then go read Shakespeare. We don’t need grammar nazi’s insulting people just for kicks.

I agree with everything you say. However, I just thought I'd grab this quote because I would hate to think that people believe I am a "grammar-nazi" and get my kicks out of insulting people. That's not my intention, and I sincerely hope I haven't offended anyone. If I have, I apologise. That's not who I am

I was just amazed at how little regard people had for such things as punctuation etc. It's pure laziness, and I hate laziness (now I can rant about that if you'd like...;) ).

But everyone's different I guess. That's what makes the world go 'round!

Laguna

I wouldn't go as far as saying that there's a rise in illiteracy in Boards.ie users, it's the nature of an internet forum/chatroom, people relax their grammar when at a computer as it's not seen as formal and required of them to have the Oxford Dictionary beside them when replying to a post. What does annoy me is the 'txtspk' that is ever more frequent these days, on Boards and in real life.