Holy Fuck
Invisionfree’s main server just got hacked. Fuck.
You Fail English
I’m sure we’ve all come across it during our time on the Interbutts so I don’t think I need to give too many horrific examples of this menace. I am talking about… really really bad spelling and grammar.
On a forum I frequent I ranted about, well, a lot of stuff that really grinds my gears. Because of the nature of the forum, most of the rants were about online roleplaying, in a play-by-post format. Because of the nature of this kind of roleplaying (where you write scenes etc), several of these were focussed on spelling/grammar.
- The constant confusion of your/you’re. It’s like the icon says: “Your stupid.” “My stupid what?”
- Apostrophes being used for plurals. No. Stop it. Please.
- Errors that could have easily been picked up with spellcheck, but obviously haven’t.
- “I’m an excellent writer, I don’t make mistakes.” YOU MAKE OVER A DOZEN IN A POST! AND LOOK! LOOK! A SENTENCE WITH EIGHT %$#@ING ERRORS IN IT. EIGHT!
Most people agreed with me on everything, but I frowned when someone replied with the following:
I will not be bothered by people not knowing how to use apostrophes correctly, because I didn’t know until recently and my science teacher didn’t even know. It is actually not very common for people to know about that. Moreso in the RPing world, but still not common.
I’m sorry, what?
My response:
It’s only in the rping world that I have discovered this problem, and it really bothers me. If you are playing a game where the means of playing is writing, you need to be able to get your point across. Basic grammar and spelling is part of that. So if you are going to do something incorrectly and it completely changes the meaning of what you have written, then you have failed.
And theirs:
I know no one in RL except my boyfriend and my English teacher who actually knows that you don’t spell the possessive its with an apostrophe. Many people also don’t know about plurals. I don’t believe it’s a part of ‘basic’ spelling and grammar. To me, that’s being able to write ‘I have a cat’ and spell it correctly, in the right order, using capital letters and a period.
What has happened to our educational system (and I do mean “our”, because this person is from New Zealand, like me) if plurals aren’t considered part of basic writing? Who the hell teaches people some habits?
To pretty much quote an idiot I came across in my rping time who insisted that the plural of “beheading” is spelt “beheading’s”, and when corrected said “Well, you can spell it both ways, and I prefer to spell it that way“.
Where’s that Queen of Wands comic with the old lady attacking the girl for txtspeak when you need it, huh? Meanwhile, I think I need to write more on this subject.
