Since this thread is now more about the hijack than the OP, I’m going to (foolishly) stick my nose in.
Deliberately bad grammar is the message board equivalent of someone who affects a heavy foreign accent in conversation. It makes people who don’t know you (and don’t know you’re affecting an accent) think you’re just off the boat. It makes people who do know you (and do know you’re affecting an accent) think you’re a pretentious little prick. And it makes it harder for everyone to understand just what you’re talking about.
This is different for people who honestly have speech impediments or actual native accents. That calls for a little extra effort from the listener to glean the meaning, and in that situation would not be unreasonably complained about by the average listener. In the same way, those who are late-in-life literate or honestly ignorant of proper grammar or spelling receive a certain amount of leeway for their errors.
The problem comes when those who affect their literary idiosyncrasies try to hide behind those who come by them honestly. It takes a whole 1/2 second to hit the shift key at the beginning of a sentence or a proper noun. Excuse me if I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the inordinate effort to preserve that 1/2 second of time, or for the incredibly pigheaded attempt to defend that 1/2 second of time conservation.
i think you are making this more complicated than it really is.
I think you are making this more complicated than it really is.
you know what jayjay? i’ll bet you understood the first sentence just fine.
“And it makes it harder for everyone to understand just what you’re talking about.”
that statement is not true. i have no problem understanding the people who post here and do not capitalize. unless they are not clear in what they are saying. but i have that same problem with someone who has perfect grammar, spelling etc.
in my opinion, anyone who judges me by my grammar (on a MESSAGE BOARD) instead of what i am saying is acting foolishly.
the point is that there are no rules here for spelling, grammar, capitalization etc. so the barney fife impersonators who feel the need to correct other people are out of line and should stop.
Judging solely from post content, I can say with confidence that Miller is a clever, witty, thoughtful poster, probably one of my favorite on the board. Of all the people to rip into for a single innocuous remark about how capitalization can improve post readibility, he was a poor target.
djf750, on the other hand, is an irritating, abrasive, childish brat, with the personality of ferret excrement. If we do take posting style into account, he’s also lazy and unclear.
I’ve been trying to restrain myself from posting what I really think, since the last time I did that djf750 ripped me a new one. Also, I’ve been wondering if it was just myself and Miller who shared the same opinion on this topic.
Giraffe, you are my main man. Thank you for confirming what I suspected, and for putting it so succinctly.
djf750: Stop acting like a child whos toys have been taken away from him, and grow the fuck up. For someone aged 52 you are acting like a immature prick. Stop it.
You know that language you’re writing these thoughts in? It’s called English. And it does have rules for spelling, grammar, capitalization, etc. The fact that those rules are relaxed under conversational situations does not matter. The fact that utter laziness and disrespect for the language and the people who are being written to has caused those rules to be relaxed under certain internet situations does not matter. English has rules. English has conventions.
Poetry is poetry, prose is prose, written conversation is written conversation. Unless you’re the second coming of e.e. cummings, learn the rules and use them, or risk looking like an illiterate 10-year-old.
Not a problem, samarm. The whole internet-inspired “grammar/spelling don’t matter” attitude makes me ill. I can see the day when business letters consist of “C U at the MTG!” It scares me…
the point is that there are no rules here for spelling, grammar, capitalization etc. so the barney fife impersonators who feel the need to correct other people are out of line and should stop.
it is that simple.
ps. i agree and have already stated it. i too enjoy miller’s posts, even when he tries to dazzle us with all his big words. face it miller, george will you are not, although i am sure you wear a tweed coat and a bow tie and fantasize about berating some timid freshman in your advanced lit. class at stanford.
samarm buddy, cmon, you spelled spoiled “spoilt” and you had the gall to tell the OP to capitalize?
and mr. giraffe:
“Of all the people to rip into for a single innocuous remark about how capitalization can improve post readibility, he was a poor target.”
get your facts straight.
and thank you for taking the time to read all my posts.
jayjay, do you realize that you just parodied yourself? do you know how many errors there are in that INTERNET post? what are you suggesting? that everything written here should be perfect and be like a business letter?
take your last sentence. it should end with a period. oh yeah we are just typing back and forth on an INTERNET MESSAGE BOARD. so it is ok dot dot dot
Can this interweb machine be used for dating? What about naked photographs of women? Is there somewhere I can see candid, naked photographs of women on this interweb device?
You’re still doing it! I don’t care that I misspelled “spoilt”. I already said that some spelling mistakes are inevitable in posts. My point was that there is no excuse for deliberate and constant refusal to attempt correct grammar (which includes using capitals).
For example, this post I am writing now - I will re-read it before submitting, just to check for spelling / grammar, but there may still be mistakes. You will notice, however, that I’ve made an effort to make the post readable.
Is this sinking into your brain, or do I have to keep repeating it? If you pick me up on a spelling mistakes one more time then I can only assume you are either a) suffering from a severe learning disability b) a complete dipstick. I’d like to think you are neither, so please prove it by acting like an adult and debating the issue at hand.
Yes, actually there are rules for spelling, grammar, and capitalization. The rules are not specific to this board, they are largely uniform throughout the English speaking world. And no matter how much you bitch about it, people are going to judge you on how well you follow them. This is a simple fact of life, one that I’d exepct you to have learned after more than a half century on this planet. Of course, I still don’t believe for a minute that you really are as old as you say you are. I just can’t accept that someone your age could still be this immature.
I’m not trying to dazzle, it’s just the way I speak.
George will I what? Oh, George Will! See, if you used proper capitalization, I’d have known you were using a proper noun, and not a verb. Sure, I figured it out, but it took me several seconds. Because of your obsessions with lower case letters, communication was impaired and you looked like a babbling jackass. I couldn’t have written a better example of why capitalization is important if I had tried.
And somehow I doubt that there are a hell of a lot of teaching opportunities at Stanford for stoners with undergraduate degrees. And I never wear tweed or bowties. You can’t get oil stains out of tweed, and wearing any sort of necktie around a lathe is asking for a broken neck.
Although I do have a few classroom fantasies. “Suzy, you’v been misusing apostrophes again.” “Oh no, Mr. Miller. I’m so sorry. I guess you’ll just have to… punish me?” <boom-chicka-boom-bwa>
so what you are saying is that you read and understood my post even though i did not capitalize?
why don’t you stick to the point of all this? once again, you wrote your post like a message board post AND NOT a business letter. i still understood what you were trying to convey (i think).
so what is it? should we demand that everyone here posts perfectly and in a business like way or should we just try to get the point of the other person’s post?
because if you call someone out for not capitalizing, then they should also be called out for bad spelling, incorrect use of hyphens, and cramming their whole post into one paragraph.
or should we all just act wisely and accept the fact that this is a MESSAGE BOARD and you will see a wide varity of writing here, some good , some bad, potato, potawto, tomato, tomawto dot dot dot
Didn’t know you had a secret admirer, now did you? I’ll bet you feel pretty foolish about blaming all those dead mice and birds that keep turning up at your front doorstep on the cat.
djf750, you can keep proving that you are right by pointing out how legible your posts are and how many errors are in those of other people, but you’ve got a couple of problems:
We can all read all the posts in this thread, and quickly come to the conclusion that you are an incoherent little twit all on our own.
Even if your posting style wasn’t muddled and incoherent in its own right, your actual posts themselves are irritating, childish, and stupid. Which leads me, the casual reader, to conclude that you are also probably irritating, childish and stupid.
“This is a simple fact of life, one that I’d exepct you to have learned after more than a half century on this planet.”
what is wrong with this sentence?
no, not the fact that miller visciously reminded me of how freaking old i am. sad to say that part was correct.
miller, that word that you misspelled (i am never sure if i am misspelling misspell) JUMPED out at me. the nuns made sure we learned to spell back in the 50’s or it was a trip to see father o’dwyer. (no sister!! i’ll be good ! i promise!)
but miller, i understand that this is a MESSAGE BOARD and people make mistakes here. now if you sent me a letter asking for a job and there was a misspelled (sp?) word, i would not like it at all and i would judge the person accordingly. (especially with spell check everywhere). but i don’t judge you by all the words you misspell. (sp?)
or at least i don’t type a post about it when i see it. i don’t have the right to since THERE ARE NO RULES about it.
and neither do you.
i knew spoilt was correct, i just wanted to see if smarm did. and i guess he didn’t. (i didn’t really)
so you speak for everyone? are you all at a dopefest discussing me?
the part that hurts there is yes, i can be irritating, childish and VERY stupid , but i do pride myself on easy to read and easy to understand posts.
they may be vapid, trite, banal, bathetic, bromidic, cliched, common, cornball, drained, dull, exhausted, flat, hackneyed, hokey, jejune, mildewed, moth-eaten, musty, old, ordinary, pedestrian, platitudinous, prosaic, ready-made, routine, run-of-the-mill, shopworn, stale, threadbare, timeworn, tired, uninspired, unoriginal, used-up, vapid, warmed-over, and worn-out but i always try to make them coherent and easy to read.
