High School Level Education

[eric l]

Well, I'm one of those participants for whom English is just another second language. And I know that I make spelling errors, even in my mother tongue (although there I have the excuse of having lived through 2 spelling reforms).
I may make some errors because I write in other languages as well, and sometimes mix up things a liitle (but I try not to do so on your German and French forums).
I don't know about "native speakers" but to me it is surely much easier to read standard English with few spelling or grammar errors than to decipher those SMS-like codes or more or less phonetical transcriptions.
In fact, if I come upon such a reply, I am less inclined to take it seriously, and sometimes will need an extra incentive to read it (e.g. the fact that the poster's location is somewhere out of the US or the UK).
Spelling or grammar errors actually take some of the attention away from the message - and that's where you want the reader's attention focussed on !

[cwes99_03]

Occasionally, I will ask a poster if they are writing in a secondary language, and sometimes I get flack back when they aren't.

There are a couple of people who regularly can't get their ideas across to the rest of us though, because they don't take the time to formulate their ideas.

These I call ramblers. They generally have no paragraph structure, write a whole lot of run-on sentences, use little punctuation, have almost no capital letters, ........ oh and write posts about 4 pages long. These I chide and regularly ask to pare down their writing.

Even I make mistakes, but rather than click preview post and check everything I write, I generally post, and then do a quick once over and edit if I need to. However, I don't always have the time and have at times editted even days later.

[Mercedes Benzene]

I believe that a lot of people posting on these forums have the ability to write properly, however due to the informal environment here, choose not to.
In my opinion, one can still write an intellectual thread response despite a sacrifice in formality.

Proper english does make things a lot easier though...

[HydrogenBond]

A few things that would help are spell check and something that requires a review post prompt before the submit reply. I know myself, I used to be excellent at spelling, but much has atrophied. To me the content is more important than the cosmetics. On the other hand, smudged make-up can make a babe look a little under the weather.

[GAHD]

O...Somheow I tihnk grmmaer is much mor imopratnt to conyeving infomration then speeling.

[Mercedes Benzene]

O...Somheow I tihnk grmmaer is much mor imopratnt to conyeving infomration then speeling.

I agreey muchly.
Butt mix of bothe just is stoopid.

[TheBigDog]

My posting controls have a spell check built in. I had to download a program the first time I used it, but it works really well. I think this option is available to everyone.

I think that the ability to edit so easily leads to a lack of value to each keystroke. As a result we do not learn to be as perfect in execution as generations past when a mistake was more costly in terms of fixing it. So instead of people becoming better for making it easier to fix things, it actually increased laziness. My opinion.

Bill

[eric l]

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

There are a couple of people who regularly can't get their ideas across to the rest of us though, because they don't take the time to formulate their ideas.

These I call ramblers. They generally have no paragraph structure, write a whole lot ...

I got your point. I'll try to leave a white line between paragraphs ! Anything else ?

But don't blame me if occasionally I write "realise" instead of "realize". In fact, it still seems odd to me, as if "realize" is "West-Atlantic", although that's the way you find it in the Oxford dictionary.

And by the way, I owe it to none of my teachers, but to inspector Morse to have learned this.

[cwes99_03]

Not at all. I'm talking about people who don't ever use the carriage return. They simply type on and on and on in a single paragraph that covers a whole page.
Your post above was fine, I could see the difference between the paragraphs. However, I can see the benefits of having a double space between paragraphs, too.

You know it is too bad that you can't type a tab online. The tab for paragraph indent was awesome. Maybe someone can change the code so that every new paragraph automatically starts indented.

[TheBigDog]

___Turtle used to do this for the beginning of each paragraph. But at some point he stopped doing it.
___I recall someone commenting to Turtle once that there was a tab "indent" function available that he could use. And that he replied that he knew about it, but was so used to doing this that he just prefered to stick with it. I do not know what the indent function was or is.

Bill