I apologize for my orthographic problems, not his. I’ll just say that my phone sometimes adds inappropriate apostrophes, and while i fix those when i notice them, i don’t always notice. Also, while i try to keep my spelling and punctuation accurate enough to avoid driving other people nuts, i suspect i often fail, especially for for sensitive souls. I have always been bad at spelling, even as a child, and have always struggled with proofreading. I often fail to see errors. It might be related to being dyslexic. But my middle school English teacher was angry that my second draft often had more errors than the first, and thought i was doing it on purpose. I wasn’t. New ways to write create new and exciting ways to make mistakes.
Anyway, except for capitalization (which i really don’t care much about) i actually do proofread, and do try to avoid errors. But i know i do a terrible job of it. Especially when i just want to offer a quick response. I’m convinced my phone sometimes “corrects” my words after I’ve seen them. Anyway, I’m really not doing it to annoy you.
Dave Barry calls that “the grocer’s apostrophe”. It’s apparently a requirement for membership in the Secret Society of Grocer’s to hold the unshakeable belief that all plurals require an apostrophe.
In German, we call that the “Deppenapostroph”, the “fool’s apostrophe”. Note that the rules are different, and the genitive ‘s’ in German doesn’t have an apostrophe, so every “Gabi’s Frittenbude” is wrong, just wrong!
Mea culpa. What is “don’t”? A contraction of do not. How many characters in “do not”? Five. How many in “don’t” five. Not much of a contraction, eh? So, since adding that apostrophe is annoying to me, I stopped- but only in informal writing.
But that does not excuse my improper use here. So, I will try to not use the apostrophe incorrectly. However I can not promise to sometimes just leave it out entirely.
But can we not agree that posting here is really fucking informal? I had to write too much crap using very formal language that being informal here is a relief.
I can’t agree to this. In fact, I think one thing that Dopers pride themselves on is not typing like they are texting or posting on Reddit.
That said, you type whatever way you wish. It’s not for us to dictate how you choose to express yourself.
Just know if you misuse an apostrophe in a thread title, I will correct it if I see it. Other than that, the problem to tune out the pebble in the shoe of my brain over their misuse is entirely mine to solve/address/ignore as best I can. And others may be silently – if not charitably – judging you for it.
If it makes you feel any better, I make mistakes, too, which is why I don’t judge others too harshly for theirs. I noticed in one of my posts recently that I had said I made “due” with something when I know very well that I made “do.” Arrgghh. I didn’t fix it, either.
“Informal” is a pretty broad spectrum. You often appear to be on an extreme fringe of it. Some of us are more sensitive than others, though (or should I say “tho”?) with regards to deviations from standards, when is enuf enuf? I’m pretty sure you sometimes do it just to be irritating.
The problem DD is having is not other posters “agreeing” about informality. As long as community guidelines are followed, no rules have been broken.
The actual problem DD is having is that there is also no rule against other posters judging him for his preferred (and inane) posting style. And that drives him nuts.
That’s not as bad as what I experienced yesterday while commenting in a baseball thread, when spell check tried to change Cy (as in Cy Young) to Cyclospora.
I have a friend who thinks lower case looks nicer. We were working on a thing together, and i did the first draft, and she removed every capital letter I’d included.
I’m all for autocorrect because it’s so easy on your phone to go to hit one letter and get a different one. But there is no call for autocompleting some short word to something long.
No, if I meant a longer word, I’d have typed more letters. There’s this bar on the top where the phone can list words it thinks I might want to type, but there’s no reason to guess.
The second one is respelling words that I’ve already typed and have moved on to a new word. Especially when both were words. Those are so hard to notice, and they don’t do anything to tell you they’ve made a change.
There are so many little things I can think of that would make these onscreen keyboards better. Here’s one of my ideas: if you have a comma on the front page, then how about you let it also work as an apostrophe? That way you do’nt have to guess when I want an apostrophey. I’m never going to actually want to type won,t or whatever, but I may actually want wont.
I have no particular beef with Dr D, but he’s no e. e. cummings. Breaking the rules as an artistic choice can work. Sometimes though it is intentional and it definitely doesn’t, and sometimes it is laziness or sloppiness or ignorance. Or reflective of a disability.
If the intent is to communicate ideas then best to write in a manner that does that, rather than trying to be cute and instead signify that you are uneducated or lazy or both. Best to let the focus be on the idea rather than the sense of that pebble …
