Ignorant people spelling phonetically

The BBQ Pit
1

This is one of my pet peeves. It is especially prevalent in Internet communications (on forums, e-mail, etc).

The peeve being people who habitually write “should of”, “could of” and “would of”, instead of the proper “should’ve”, “could’ve” and “would’ve”.

The ('ve) representing the word “have”, of course.

Don’t they teach contractions in grade school English classes any more? And yes, I’m referring to native English-speakers, not to English-as-a-second-language writers.

I suppose that the problem can be partially explained by the fact that expressions like “could’ve” are much more prevalent in spoken communication than in written communication. If I recall correctly, the use of contractions has traditionally been discouraged in “formal” writing. Because most English classes in American schools focus on written English rather than spoken English, perhaps the ('ve) contractions aren’t emphasized.

And so people end up writing these words based upon what they hear when speaking. Still, it seems to me that the average, literate English-speaker should be able to tell that the word “of” simply does not go there.

Unless he/she is referring to “Lord Should of Pedantshire”.

Does this bug anybody else? When I’ve mentioned it, on a board for writers of all places, the responses have tended to rationalize the practice as being “people writing the way they speak”. Bleh. No, they’re writing phonetically because they don’t know any better, apparently.

2

You prolly should of put this in a diffrent forum, insted of this won. Butt Im shure a mod will bee along to moove it soon.

3

Suggestion for a more appropriate forum? I’m a bit new here, so I’ll admit that I may have erred :slight_smile:

4

Either the Pit or IMHO, depending on how ranty you felt like getting. Don’t repost it, though, they frown on that. Let a moderator move it for you.

Oh crap, I spelled everything right and everything. Damn.

5

I’ll ignore the mis-foruming (welcome to the 'boards, BTW) and say that this non-plussed manner of spelling that you speak of bugs me to no end; in fact, it’s hard for me to not judge someone this way.

I have to pause sometimes and realize that some people are entranced by the idea of Netspeak and see such typing as “r u there” etc. as acceptable shorthand. It’s sloppy, and I don’t like it. I guess being such a stickler for grammar is a fault in a way, since I sometimes let it get in the way of my judgement of some people as I already mentioned.

Sometimes, however, such a judgement is accurate.

6

Off to the Pit.

DrMatrix - GQ Moderator

7

BBQ Pit? Well, okay :wink:

Joe K - I don’t mind Netspeak per se. I understand the whole idea behind the shorthand, and I think it makes sense. However, it’s reasonably easy to spot shorthand, and take it for what it is. No problem.

But my particular peeve here just seems to scream “uneducated”. It’s certainly not shorthand. “Could’ve” is exactly the same number of keystrokes as “could of”. I’ve never seen this misusage in a context that would imply shorthand being the writer’s intent.

Of course, the people who write “could of” are usually the same writers who display a lack of awareness regarding paragraph breaks. For example, they’ll post a 3,000-word story as one solid block of text. Or they’ll leave out quotation marks so that the reader can never tell who’s speaking, especially when the writer doesn’t start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes.

To a certain extent, I understand that a writer just wants to get his/her story posted for other people to read. Still, they need to understand that some of these mistakes make their stories very confusing and difficult to read. Unfortunately these same people tend to get very defensive when these things are pointed out to them.

8

Have to agree with the “netspeak” stuff. Seriously, is it that difficult to type those two extra letters?

9

I ran into a reference to a “rod iron” balcony the other day. It makes sense, of a kind, but I still think these people need to be shaken out and taught.

10

Since they apparently don’t inform students that plural nouns don’t contain an apostrophe, I suppose you might be right.

Another peeve I have is the misuse of “I” and “me” when used in a sentence with one or more people. It’s not “George and me played a game.” It’s “George and I.” And it’s not “The taxi came for Shelley and I.” It’s “Shelley and me.”

I can still remember an elementary school teacher telling us, “You wouldn’t say, “Me played a game.” or “The taxi came for I,” would you?” Well, words to that effect, at least. Is that concept so hard to understand?

If you really want to see some bad grammar (and I mean really, really bad!) go to planetfeedback.com. Here’s a link to a letter from a guy who complained that a counterperson couldn’t speak English. (I hate people who belittle immigrants who don’t immediately lose their accents!) You can tell which paragraphs are optional boilerplate provided by the website.
http://www.planetfeedback.com/sharedLetters/viewLetter/0,2936,0-91-0-1-20-20-fb_date-desc-230365-0,00.html
And, unfortunately, there are many more letters written by people on this site that are just as bad. How does one get through life like this?

11

As ‘fonetically’ I assume :smiley:

12

I couldn’t tolerate living like that. I couldn’t even think if I didn’t have mastery of at least one language. My mind is a visual-verbal hybrid, to the best of my knowledge: I can visualize things easily, and I often reason visually, but my main method of expression is verbal, and I readily learn and comprehend in a verbal manner.

(Being able to mix modes in that way is of great use to a programmer. I can see data structures and control flow, and I can translate my flashes of inspiration into a textual representation, be it a prose passage or a subroutine.)

I’m one of the people who constantly wants a blue pencil*, so I might copyedit the world. I feel a near-visceral response to grammatical or spelling deficiencies. I would derive great pleasure from being able to fix any text that provoked such a response in me.

*A newspaper copyeditor uses a blue pencil on a printed draft of a page of copy because blue isn’t seen by the machines the newspaper uses to make copies.

13

I type “Coulda”, “Woulda”, and “Shoulda” because that’s my style and I don’t give a shit what you think.

I think people who are conscious of, and annoyed with such “errors” are losers. For one thing, there is no right or wrong way to express yourself. I could say the grass is blue, and, (imho), I wouldn’t be wrong. People say the grass is green, but why should I have to adopt your means of explanation? I understand it’s not to create confusion, but that doesn’t make it a “mistake”. Secondly, I’m dyslexic and often spell things phonetically. When I don’t have spellcheck handy, or I’m in a hurry, I rely on my goofy writing. If you were to simply point out the “right” way to say it, I wouldn’t mind, in fact I might appreciate it. Don’t expect me to change overnight because letters and numbers are not my cup of tea. I might try, however, to change. If it BOTHERS you that I don’t spell things correctly or I have problems with grammar, then I’m not the one with the problem.

The people on these message board have gotten a lot less anal about spelling errors. There are still people who will post a messages and say things like:

“Wholl make that decision?”

Then post another message saying:

"Sorry!

“Wholl” = “Who will”.

I’m just not with it today"

Who cares!? Everyone knows what you mean!! I think the people here have generally gotten less discriminatory regarding poor spellers, (btw, thank you for that). If you think that people who have a hard time getting their thoughts down in written form are less intelligent than you, that’s even worse.

Learn to deal with it, you’ll be much happier.

PS. I hate when people get all pissy when I put the fork on the “wrong” side of the table. They can fuck off.

14

I, too, hate ignorant speaking.

Tikki, the trick I learned - drop the other person. If it sounds right, you are right (i.e. Is is “Sam and I went to the store” or “Sam and me went to the store”? Well, it is “I went to the store” and not “Me went to the store” so it is “Sam and I went to the store”).

How about people that use acronyms incorrectly - PIN number, ATM machine, etc.

15

And that’s perfectly all right. “Coulda” represents a pronunciation. In fact, when I speak, I say “coulda”.

But say both of these out loud:

“Could’ve”

vs.

“Could of”

They sound exactly the same. So when somebody writes “could of”, they are not indicating a pronunciation - they are indicating that they simply don’t know the correct way to write it.

Kind of like the old musical saying, “Play in wrong once, and it’s a mistake. Play it wrong twice, and it’s jazz.” Unfortunately, writing is communication as well as expression. And when your communication is riddled with errors that result in your sentences making no sense, you have simply failed in your attempt to communicate.

I also feel that there is a distinct difference between “expressing yourself” and simply doing it wrong. E.E. Cummings was expressing himself when he played with grammatical rules. An author who habitually writes “could of”, even when the rest of his writing is correct, is making a mistake. To me, it’s the same thing as habitually leaving the apostrophes out of words.

Well, yes you would. But that’s a different argument.

That’s perfectly fine. I hope I don’t criticize dyslexics for spelling errors and the like.

Then you’re more open than many of the writers who make this particular mistake. When I posted this particular complaint on a forum for writers (I posted it as a general observation rather than singling out specific writers) the responses I got contained nothing but excuses and justifications. Not one person said, “Hey, you’re right! I didn’t even realize I was doing that!”

I fully understand that spelling and grammar are not everybody’s strong point. What BOTHERS me is that this specific bit of incorrect writing is becoming so widespread that it’s probably going to become “correct via acceptance”. Simply put, “of” and “have” do not mean the same thing, so replacing one with the other is not a matter of “expression”. It’s simply a mistake.

Note that my OP used terms like “ignorant”, “don’t know any better”, etc. None of those terms have anything to do with intelligence. “Ignorant” simply means “doesn’t know”. My point being that most of these people simply don’t know that they’re doing it the wrong way. After all, there are plenty of remarkably intelligent people who continue to pronounce the “T” in the word “often”.

Truthfully, I can deal with it in conversational writing, such as a forum or e-mail conversation. It mainly disturbs me in “formal” writing, such as a work of fiction, or an essay, etc. When people post a work of fiction to a writer’s forum, and ask for opinions, they shouldn’t get defensive when somebody points out that “could of” is incorrect.

16

How about when people write fucken instead of fuckin’.

17

Very well expressed, Phase42. I’ve always thought that when someone points out an error to me (assuming they do it courteously) that he is doing me a favor. Otherwise I’m likely to continue with the mistake.

A friend of mine (a very intelligent person, BTW) wrote that something was done “for all intensive purposes.” She had no idea the phrase was “all intents and purposes.”

18

To be honest, I may have been quite harsh. I just get a lot of criticism with my spelling and grammar, and I sort of let out all of my anger towards this thread, sorry about that.

I still stand by my “grass is blue” comment. Perhaps if you specify that anyone who says such a thing is a failure as far as communication goes, then I would agree. But words, (imho) don’t have actual substance.

For example, if you grew up being told green was blue and blue was green, then you wouldn’t disagree. It’s just something, (man made) to describe to others what we are thinking or seeing… whatever. It’s not as if a person sees what known as the color “blue” when he or she looks at grass. It’s also not as if I wouldn’t correct a person if they tell me it’s blue… I’m just saying that if one decides to substitute one word over another, I honestly couldn’t say that there’s a RIGHT way and a WRONG way.

19

That “IMHO” was in the wrong place…

I thought that was important enough to correct. “IMHO” applies to pretty much everything.

20

You people haven’t even scratched the surface of what I have to put up with. I run a web site in which I mostly post contributed short stories and other materials. The errors I see and have to correct are hideous at best.

In addition to the mistakes that have been cited in this thread, here are some more of the problems I am seeing all too often:

[ul]
[li] Poor spelling, including “netspeak” and words which are phonetically spelled. This includes “could of”, “kinda”, “gonna” and the like.[/li][li] Failing to use a capital I when addressing oneself in first person.[/li][li] Lack of punctuation. What a joy it is for me to have to figure out where one sentence ends and the next one begins. Periods are nice to have in writing. The concept of using them in order to separate sentences seems to evade some people, though. Missing quotation marks are just as bad, having to figure out where the quote is supposed to begin and end when a person is speaking. [/li][li] Overuse/misuse of punctuation. I get stories in which each sentence spoken by the same speaker has its own quote marks. I also get stories. like this, in which commas appear, every third word, or so, and, it’s, quite annoying, to say, the least. Others will use commas where periods should appear and vice versa.[/li][li] Shifting tense within the story. A story that is written in past tense should remain in past tense, yet so many writers will switch to present tense halfway through.[/li][li] Shifting point of view within the story. Similar to the above item, I get stories in which the point of view shifts from third person to first person (and vice versa). This is annoying as hell and it’s an incredible pain in the ass to correct.[/li][li]Long blocks of text without any paragraph breaks. I have to figure out where to put the breaks myself. I find this problem to be at its worst when people write a dialog between two speakers and cram it into one long string.[/li][/ul]

I could go on with more examples, but these are the ones that seem to raise my blood pressure the most.

The submissions I receive have come from people of all ages, young teens and elderly adults alike. I presume most of them have received an adequate education, at least an education that is sufficient to write coherently and correctly. I’m no grammar maven myself and I don’t expect perfection, but some of the stories I have seen submitted to me are just appallingly BAD! Judging by the poor quality of such writing, I shudder to think that our schools are not teaching kids to write properly and our education system is in a sad state.

If these people wrote like this in school they must have gotten straight Fs and probably didn’t graduate, and if they did, they should have been held back. I feel sorry for the teachers who have to read this sort of crap on a daily basis and resist the urge to smash their heads against a brick wall. Some stories are so badly written that my head feels like it’s going to explode out of sheer frustration. These are the stories I end up rejecting, deciding that they’re not worth the trouble.