I’m curious how members feel about posts that are written with no capitals, no proper punctuation and poor grammar.
I will start by saying that I don’t like it. I’m not talking about a typo or occasional spelling or punctuation mistake, I’m talking about posters who routinely choose to go against the somewhat accepted norms of how posts are structured here.
So this is the question:
how do u feel…about “dipherantly rittyn” …posts
It depends on why they’re doing it. If they’re doing it deliberately because they’re anti-education, that gets no respect from me. “da man aint guna b makein me use no proper grammer!” Yeah well, you ain’t gonna be makin’ me read your post, either, you dumb smug motherfucker.
If it’s just that someone is young or uneducated, I would be annoyed but try to slog through until I found evidence that they’re unwilling to learn. Then I’d stop reading/replying, because I’m not going to waste time typing advice that they won’t pay attention to.
Or if they’re doing it to be a unique snowflake, I’d roll my eyes but probably keep on reading. Most people I’ve known have gone through a similar phase. When I was 13, I used to dot my i’s with hearts and typed “u” instead of “you” because I thought it was cool. But I outgrew it.
It depends on how egregious it is. If it’s just someone not using capital letters, OK, fine, whatever. It’s annoying but not that annoying. I’ll still read the post. If it’s someone who doesn’t even have a concept of where the punctuation goes, or is using a lot of txtspk or can’t make it two words without a misspelling, then I’ll probably skip that. Ditto for anyone using weird affectations, like our recent poster who puts ellipses between all her words, or the Grapist, etc.
What kind of image does a post present if it has absolutely no punctuation, no paragraphs, and no capital letters at all? Even children can write better than that.
Acceptable only from Super Kapowzler.
My eyes! My eyes!
I don’t really find them annoying, but I do notice. And I tend to have a bias against them as in, I don’t take the opinion of the poster very seriously.
Annoying. I read a lot and tend to be too lazy to bother with posts without capitalisation or punctuation.
Somewhere between “so freaking annoying” and “annoying”. If the topic is compelling enough I’ll try to read through it. Mostly I ignore such posts.
Saved me all that typing. I do find them kind of annoying, though. I needed an option somewhere between one and two - I don’t ignore the posts until they reach a certain egregiousness level (like the linked post - I read about three words of that post). The ellipsis lady - I still read her posts, but I wish she’d stop doing that.
It depends on the context of the post. If someone is telling a story in a particular vernacular, fine and dandy. If it is obviously a single typo, fine. I do that too, especially since I am dyslexic. If it is the first time I have read something from that poster, I will give them a try. After all, some people just cannot spell well. It does not necessarily mean they are stupid.
However, if I get the impression that someone is choosing ignorance rather than trying to write correctly or follow the rules, I will begin to skip their posts.
For the most part, it doesn’t bother me. On the other hand, if the post is long enough to warrant multiple paragraphs, but instead is written in one long block, I’ll skip it. If it’s written in one long run-on sentence, without punctuation, or is some other way virtually unreadable, I’ll skip it.
I don’t take a whole lot of posting on message boards seriously anyway. I look at message boards as entertainment, a social outlet, and information. Sometimes I learn things I didn’t know before, but more often, it’s relatively trivial stuff. Hardly the level of the Gettysburg Address, here or on other boards.
Good Og!!! :eek:
If they’re further than two standard deviations from me, I lose patience pretty quickly.
I am certainly not a grammar nazi, but the fact is your post is in the marketplace for an audience, along with a whole lot of folks who make at least a modest effort to be understood, and easy to read. That means falling within the broad range of common usage of the language. Tweetspeak, and IM habits are simply a detraction from your actual message. If the signal to noise ratio drops more than a small amount, they have a special key on my computer marked Pg Dn. I use it.
Tris
If someone clearly doesn’t know how to write with at least a semblance of proper grammar, their thoughts probably aren’t organized enough to be worth paying attention to. Minor errors are of course forgivable, but they do annoy me. All too often I’m reading a thread and I notice someone mixing up its and it’s or there and their, and I think, “Dammit, if you’re going to take my side, stop looking dumb!”
I voted for the first choice, although I sometimes do read them. (Well, mostly skim them unless they are very short.)
It’s not so much that they are annoying, since they can be skipped. It’s that posters who use that style rarely have anything interesting to say. Such posts are almost invariably either vapid, incoherent, stupid, or insane (sometimes all of the above). Signal to noise is so low that they usually aren’t worth the effort.
I will read the post if it’s something minor, or occasional (someone still learning how to post from a smartphone, for example) - but there are posters whose posts I have to force myself to read, and usually end up ignoring, simply because the formatting or incoherent grammar make them so difficult to read.
Someone whose English isn’t very good, I can and will read; someone who just wants to be special and can’t find a better way to do it than by using strange formatting, grammar or punctuation, I’m not bothering.
You know, I voted for the first option, but now that I post from my phone a lot, I hope I haven’t set myself up as “one of those people.” Auto-correct does some weird stuff sometimes, and other times I’m just not patient enough to format via Droid.
I am very bothered by it, but usually still read it. Unless there are no paragraphs, and it reads like a stream of consciousness, in which case I try to infer what it was about from its replies.