I can think of several Dopers who do this, though I shan’t name any names because I don’t wish to call anyone out. It’s not up to me to decide what is and is not acceptable,and I don’t wish to criticize the practice here; I am just curious.
Those of you who deliberately leave out standard punctuation marks, particularly apostrophes: what are your reasons?
I’ve wondered this before too. But then I decided that it bugs me just slightly less than the extraneous apostrophe’s everyone puts at the end’s of plural word’s. Argh.
no comment
Da
Because I make lots of money when my books become movies starring Viggo Mortensen and Josh Brolin, so I dont have to use damn apostrophes.
It’s got to be laziness or ignorance. Not sure which is worse.
if its a short statement whats the use
because the internet isnt important
if im writing a book, i will use punctuation
much much worse is excessive apostrophes. I know the right way to use apostrophes, and choose not to out of laziness and to type just slightly faster. But to see too many apostrophes shows someone who does not actually know the rules.
The much bigger issue is why don’t they teach grammar in school anymore.
The way I write on here (and other boards I’m a member of) in NO way reflects the ways I would write something for work or something else of an important nature. A few people on here are really haughty about grammar. Everyone makes mistakes. It really makes me smile when a grammar nazi makes an error. I have more important things to do (and more fun things to do) than to write drafts for The Dope or continously check my spelling and grammar.
Not everyone takes their writing seriously on here.
I don’t do it here, but I do in emails to friends. I do it because they do it, so we all do it. It’s a social thing, a different register of language. Just like how people are more casual in their speech with friends.
I sometimes omit them in tweets because of the character limit. I can’t think of any other occassion when I wouldn’t use them - I find their lack of use to be quite jarring and I usually have to go back and re-read the sentence to understand it.
“The internet” isn’t important? How about you, are you important? Or how you’re perceived by people whom you’re corresponding with? It’s like the song lyric “wave your hands in the air like you don’t care”. If one doesn’t care, wouldn’t it be best not to bother? I mean, why bother posting anything since it’s “the internet” which “isn’t important”?
Those that sometimes place apostrophes where they don’t properly belong are at least trying. They’re attempting to write correctly, and with the attitude that they actually give a darn about how they’re communicating, they have a decent chance of eventually improving.
Why ask why?
Why do you, Skald, spend 90% of your time on this site posting hypothetical situations that request hypothetical solutions for hypotheticals that can’t possibly be reconciled?
I’ll tell you why. Because different people value different things, ask different questions and communicate in different ways.
Personally? I spell out every letter and apostrophe mark in a text message, just because that’s what I do. If the response is:
no, y? UR?
I don’t give a fuck.
i’ll admit that u mite anoy me like this in a post, but i’ll let it go in a txt. i can surely forgive a bit of sloppy punctuation. y cant you? u have foibles of ur own.
Some people are just lazy or ignorant, but I’ve seen plenty of others who you can tell are doing it deliberately to give their posts a certain “voice”. It can be quite effective.
Anyway it keeps things interesting, I find. Maybe think of it as a different accent or dialect.
perhaps it is faster. lets see. oh how liberating. this is where i would normally put an exclamation mark
you do need periods though
or you have to assign every sentence a different line
which is annoying
Because I hate looking for the ’ button, and I dont care about you lot enough to make the effort.
Its only the ’ button though. I could probably train myself out of it, but, you know, meh.
ETA: The idea that people do things like this intentionally, or “to give themselves a voice”, what a load of bollocks. Signatures and sign-offs yes, but why would anybody omit punctuation to try and impress others. Get some perspective.
And all those .000004ths of a second you save by not hitting the apostrophe key really add up!
I don’t think they understand that punctuation and the like are used to help the reader understand what they’re saying. When I read something, I assign it different inflection and tempo depending on the punctuation.
If someone writes without using it, it reads horribly and they sound like morons to me.
My mother is a real-live grammar nazi, has won awards for her penmanship, and at one point could type 60wpm on an old-fashioned typewriter. I gave her her first computer a few years ago and her first email to me was about 2000 words with absolutely no punctuation of any kind except for the occasional ellipsis. I wanted to weep.
Looking? Are you a hen pecking typer, or someone who just never learned how to type? Just curious.
How a person writes is the only frame of reference I have to what type of person they are, regardless of if that impression is correct or not. Yes, I stereotype based on posts.
if u type lyk dis = adolescent with little to no life skills, would likely say ‘they don’t care’ what people think of them, and use phrases like ‘dont lyk it, dont read’ or ‘u dont no me’.
if you type like this with no punctuation or capitalization = lazy, uneducated, doesn’t care about getting their point across, viciously defends their right to type however they want fairly often.
If you type like this, with punctuation and capitalization = probably educated, good perspective, cares about their audience and getting their point across without detracting from it by confusing the reader.
Keep in mind these are just my opinions. Other people can look past poor writing.
Posts that lack punctuation and capitalization are hard to read, and sometimes I need to go back and re-read paragraphs a few times to get it, especially if they lack punctuation. By then, I’ll have lost interest and am just focused on the poor grammar and punctuation.
In my opinion, people that post with the intent of clearly expressing their thought or idea to the reader get a much better response then people who don’t care either way. If I really want input or ideas, I take the time to phrase my question or comment properly.