Spell Checking...

[J Oh]

Okay so everyone makes, I understand that, but I find it hard to believe that people don't learn how to spell correctly. I know this has been an issue even before I was in grade school and it still is today. Children not learning how to spell or figuring out how to spell a word. Some of this skill comes with age and experience. It also depends on if the individual cares or not obviously. All this short-hand and incorrectly spelled words you see on the internet and in text messages. I fear that the foundation of written language is at stake.

Another thing too, is that if you are obviously not one to care at least use the spell check that comes with your internet browser so you don't look like an idiot. Its for you're own sake really. Every time I see anything misspelled, especially on a forum like this, I just scratch my head wondering why someone ignored so many wavy red lines.

I don't want to say I'm perfect, I do tend to use acronyms from time to time but it never really goes farther than that.

I'm sure at least someone has something to say about this matter.

 

[Austin]

I moved this into General Discussion because I believe that it could become an actual discussion as opposed to a simple rant. Plus it didn't exactly belong there in the first place.

I'm inclined to agree with you, J Oh. I can understand a typo every now or then, but at a certain point it just seems like people aren't reading through their comments before they hit the post button. I know that proper spelling and grammar doesn't make or break an idea, but the truth is that I'm much more likely to read and appreciate a post that has few very spelling and grammar mistakes, whereas I've skipped over comments that are a single block of text or have five typos within the first sentence. And I'm certain that I'm not the only one who does that. Even if you don't have exceptional spelling skills, a spell check function is incredibly easy to use and can be found on most browsers, if I'm not mistaken.

Other thing that bugs me are mistakes that are common even among otherwise excellent posters. For example, the word is spelled "definitely". Not "definatly" or "defintely". Or confusing "it's" with "its" and "your" with "you're". I'm not saying that these reduce the quality of a post, necessarily, I'm merely saying that it doesn't take that much time to learn the differences between them all. Another thing that irks me are sounding out words as opposed to spelling them properly (prob-bob-lee). If you have the time to sound out a word and convert it to text, you have time to quickly check an online dictionary. Obviously, your browser is already open, so why not?

There are exceptions to this, however. I don't expect someone who didn't learn English as their first language to have perfectly spelled-out posts, nor do I expect young children to have the skills to spell properly, or even care enough about their posts to make an effort. Also, I apologize if I came off a bit aggressive in this post. I'm a bit of a spelling freak.

 

[KrazyKyuubi]

Gawrsh, nobdy nveer missspeels anythang.

Don't you hate it when people do that? How exactly DO you ignore red lines? I guess if you're colorblind...

The scary thing is, we were having an eighth grade tornado team conference, and Mrs. Franks asked us 'You all know how to spell check on the computer, right?' My friend Maria and I were sitting next to each other and we said yes, but the resounding answer from the room was 'NO.' The room was silent until another one of my friends Ryan said 'Are you all freakin' STUPID??' The teachers and a few students were shocked. These kids spend so much time texting and on Facebook and MySpace I'm afraid they don't know grammar and spelling anymore. They didn't even know what the red line under a word MEANT. My old computer teacher didn't know what the red and green lines meant, so she TURNED THEM OFF. How stupid can you be... I even told her, 'The red line is spelling and the green is grammar...' She said that they didn't mean anything and they were annoying and the kids asked too many questions about them so she kept them off and told me to go sit down and never contradict what your teacher says. I hated computer class.

And we're in EIGHTH GRADE for goodness sakes! (I feel like an old lady saying that. ) Today in English we were learning about direct objects. All you do is take the verb and ask verb who or verb what to find the object, if there's on it's transitive, if not it's intransitive. It took us forty minutes to get through this because these kids didn't understand it. It was supposed to be a five-minute worksheet tops. I feel scared for these kids when they get to the real world and misspell their name on a job application.

All I can do is help these kids when they ask me for it, and I'm certainly teaching my children spelling and grammar when I have them...I'm starting to think it might do the world more good to be a Spelling and Grammar teacher instead of a particle astrophysicist...I just don't know.

 

[J Oh]

Gawrsh, nobdy nveer missspeels anythang.

Don't you hate it when people do that? How exactly DO you ignore red lines? I guess if you're colorblind...

The scary thing is, we were having an eighth grade tornado team conference, and Mrs. Franks asked us 'You all know how to spell check on the computer, right?' My friend Maria and I were sitting next to each other and we said yes, but the resounding answer from the room was 'NO.' The room was silent until another one of my friends Ryan said 'Are you all freakin' STUPID??' The teachers and a few students were shocked. These kids spend so much time texting and on Facebook and MySpace I'm afraid they don't know grammar and spelling anymore. They didn't even know what the red line under a word MEANT. My old computer teacher didn't know what the red and green lines meant, so she TURNED THEM OFF. How stupid can you be... I even told her, 'The red line is spelling and the green is grammar...' She said that they didn't mean anything and they were annoying and the kids asked too many questions about them so she kept them off and told me to go sit down and never contradict what your teacher says. I hated computer class.

And we're in EIGHTH GRADE for goodness sakes! (I feel like an old lady saying that. ) Today in English we were learning about direct objects. All you do is take the verb and ask verb who or verb what to find the object, if there's on it's transitive, if not it's intransitive. It took us forty minutes to get through this because these kids didn't understand it. It was supposed to be a five-minute worksheet tops. I feel scared for these kids when they get to the real world and misspell their name on a job application.

All I can do is help these kids when they ask me for it, and I'm certainly teaching my children spelling and grammar when I have them...I'm starting to think it might do the world more good to be a Spelling and Grammar teacher instead of a particle astrophysicist...I just don't know.

I was shocked to read this o.o

But like you said, this seems to be a growing problem. What really makes me sad is the fact that your teacher said what she said. We could open a whole can of worms with this but I have always felt that teachers, even if they are grade and middle school teachers, should have a full education in what they are teaching. Whats the point of having a student who is more intelligent than the teacher in the class?

 

[AwesomeTingle]

I agree that Spelling is beginning to grow into a large problem in our society. Children getting cell phones and only writing abbreviations or 'text talk' is no good. Heck, I saw some teenagers walking down my street saying things like 'btw, Josh is hot. Jk!' That's just weird... but an even worse problem growing in today's society is handwriting. Now kids are typing everything, and their handwriting is horrible. By reading this you won't know if we have bad or good handwriting. Now they don't even teach kids how to correctly hold a pencil, which makes it hard to write so people can read it. I remember there used to be a handwriting class. Now there's a typing class. Just saying...

 

[athenian200]

I've often voiced my concerns about the integrity of the written language, only to be rebuffed with the idea that a living language should not be confined to artificial boundaries. I personally think that's a poor argument. We must maintain some standards of what language means, and how it should be used in order to effectively communicate.

I have no desire for the rise of provincialism that makes two dialects mutually unintelligible. There are advantages to drawing on a largely common reservoir of vocabulary and grammar.

Grammatical mistakes can distort meaning more easily than you would think. Yes, some grammatical rules are arbitrary, but many of them are important to communication, such as comma placement and word order.

Spelling can be important as well, since it can be difficult for someone to determine what you're writing if your spelling diverges too much from standard spelling. That's the whole reason that we standardized spelling in the first place. Before that, people disagreed on how words sounded, and spelled them differently as a result. This made reading another person's writing a nightmare.

 

[Majora's Cat]

I can accept poor grammar and spelling MOST of the time... but once some hooligan begins typing every single word in a nonsensical way, it becomes hard to understand what he/she is typing. At some times, it almost makes you think that America's education systems are composed of complete idiots.

 

[J Oh]

I agree that Spelling is beginning to grow into a large problem in our society. Children getting cell phones and only writing abbreviations or 'text talk' is no good. Heck, I saw some teenagers walking down my street saying things like 'btw, Josh is hot. Jk!' That's just weird... but an even worse problem growing in today's society is handwriting. Now kids are typing everything, and their handwriting is horrible. By reading this you won't know if we have bad or good handwriting. Now they don't even teach kids how to correctly hold a pencil, which makes it hard to write so people can read it. I remember there used to be a handwriting class. Now there's a typing class. Just saying...

I didn't even think to mention handwriting as an issue. Kudos!
I'd like to take a moment to play the Devils Advocate though. In a country where technology is the driving force of the nation we are in fact using computers, phones etc.. to do a majority of our everyday activities and our main way of communication handwriting is becoming a thing of the past. Children will eventually need to learn how to use a computer and type more so than learn how to write. However, who is to say that handwriting needs to be dead? Me reasoning for that question is this; eventually technology could die out (for whatever reason) which would leave no record of things of the past. There would be no hard copy of documentation that would survive some type of technological destruction. Manual script, in many ways, is an art form that can be highly respected.

I've often voiced my concerns about the integrity of the written language, only to be rebuffed with the idea that a living language should not be confined to artificial boundaries. I personally think that's a poor argument. We must maintain some standards of what language means, and how it should be used in order to effectively communicate.

I have no desire for the rise of provincialism that makes two dialects mutually unintelligible. There are advantages to drawing on a largely common reservoir of vocabulary and grammar.

Grammatical mistakes can distort meaning more easily than you would think. Yes, some grammatical rules are arbitrary, but many of them are important to communication, such as comma placement and word order.

Spelling can be important as well, since it can be difficult for someone to determine what you're writing if your spelling diverges too much from standard spelling. That's the whole reason that we standardized spelling in the first place. Before that, people disagreed on how words sounded, and spelled them differently as a result. This made reading another person's writing a nightmare.

Lots of big words, I see what you did there :p I kid, I kid.

I agree with you though, wholeheartedly. The English language, all languages actually, can only be understood completely by being grammatically correct. An opinion of a statement can be misinterpreted by simple grammatical errors made by a person who doesn't know better or simply doesn't care. Most of these errors though can be blamed on changes to they way children are taught to read and write, depending on which generation you are from. Hell, I can remember when the change over from the spelling of the color "gray" use to be "grey". I guess it all depends on the area you were educated too.

(I just thought of how many people are actually going to pay attention to how they spell when posting in this thread) XD

 

[Kybyrian]

I see what you're saying, and I'm really doubting the written language as well. I couldn't believe it when I read about the teacher that turned off the spelling and grammar check. Teachers are pretty much ignoring things that help the kids get better because of technology. The thing I most hated about that comment was that the teacher was teaching computer class. The job of the computer class teacher is to know about the computers and help the kids use them, and apparently doesn't even know about spell check? That has to be one of the simplest things.

I know a ton of people that have very bad spelling. Most people in my school had very bad spelling and still do today. I was a star speller when I was in school, and always participated in the little extra activities that included them. I never got points taken off for spelling. I was a pretty intelligent person in school, though. I never really understood how people couldn't learn a few simple sounds and the leaders associated with them. I didn't even have to be taught that, I already knew what letters I was going to use for the sounds. I just had to look at a word and then pronounce it, and it was stuck in my head. Just learn the little exceptions and spelling becomes incredibly easy.

I suppose that's just because of my intelligence, however. There were many people that weren't as smart as me in school, and I guess that being able to learn well is the biggest factor. I think learning is mostly in whether the person wants to or not, but I might be wrong. I never had problems so I wouldn't know. I just find it horrible how kids don't even take the time to check for their obvious mistakes, or even try to learn spelling, though. It saddens me how under-appreciated the written language is. A ton of people who use it anymore misspell everything on purpose for little shortcuts. I can't even type like those people do. If I were to purposely type "u" for "you" and "b" for "b" then I would slow down considerably. They just don't appreciate proper spelling or grammar. It's even worse when people clearly have something in front of them telling them their every mistake, as well. You think that people would notice the bright red lines under every bit of their words, and it even suggests the words to correct it with. I guess they just don't care. I don't see how they couldn't, it's one of the most important things.

 

[TreeHuggerPanda]

Well, as far as the young peoples go... I'm one of the only ones who is efficient at typing at a fast pace, and manages to check spelling

But I do find it a little annoying when someone doesn't bother to check their spelling when they type, because it shows that:

You don't care
You're lazy (!!!)
You do not have a good English teacher
You hate English (Me::O)
You do not like to waste time, checking your spelling and grammar.

When people write in text language on forum posting, or even in writing, I usually tend to ignore it, and try to figure out the word the person meant to say, but when checking your spelling is a right click away, it shows that you are lazy. I don't mean to be rude, but yes, sometimes I like to shorten the word, "into" to "in2" but it's a big difference, when it's someone who only does that in texts, and someone who does it everywhere.

When your a writer and an English freak, like me, you just have to love that spell check feature^^

 

[bds1110]

Yes, it's rather hard to ignore those red lines. If you don't know what they are, that's pretty sad. DX
I'm well known for being the best speller in my school. Heck, when I was in sixth grade, I had a high school senior's level of spelling! I may not get EVERY word right, but I strive to get as many as possible. (I still have trouble spelling the word definitely correctly) If you notice a typo in your writing, edit it!

There's a kid in my school who can't spell for beans. If you ask him to write "Coincidence", he will write this: "Koinsedence". :/

If this keeps up, the future generation will type "i m very good @ ____" on their job interview paper things. (I forget what they're called) Not good.

 

[Y2K3]

This is something that has always bothered me (or at least once I started to think about it). I used 2 talk like this when I was younger, but that was just with another person or two. On a forum I would generally always try to talk as properly as possible. Like other have said, the occasional typo is fine, but wen u strt 2 talk lyk this its rlly annoying. I can't even stand text messages like that, let alone on a computer where it's so easy to type out a full word - especialy when all you're doing is omitting a single letter/character (such as 'to' to '2'). Although, I don't know where these red lines you're talking about are. I've only ever seen them on Word Perfect, not the internet.

Plus, it's really embarrassing when you're older and you look back on the times when you typed like that. I did that the other week and I was shocked. "How could I have talked like this?" I asked myself.

It's better for you now and in the future to start typing properly and this is something that really need to be reinforced, especially with grammar not being taught in schools. People are just going to either stop caring altogether or actually forget about grammar.

 

[LozzyKate]

Alright, I am a very grammatical person, so when someone misspells a words and ignores it completely, it annoys me. Being able to spell words properly and clearly is a big part of things later in life that help you progress in the things that you want to do. I'm not saying that you can't miss a word here and there, but if you have the red lines below your words, then that would be the clue to not blow the misspelled word off.

There are some people that take the easy way out of things and abbreviate words. I'm not going to lie and say I've never done that, because I have. Once you realize though, that people won't take you completely seriously if you abbreviate and misspell words, it really makes you think twice about not going over what you have written to make sure that everything is spelled correctly.

Another reason why I think that spell checking should be used more often and not ignored, is the fact that sometimes (or all the time really) it's very difficult to translate what you are trying to say. Not everyone in this generation understands abbreviated words and it should be taken into consideration that misspelled words can make people make negative opinions and comments. That may sound a little over-rated, but it's definitely true.

Think about it logically for a second and ask yourself this, what if I was professionally applying for a job, or sending in an essay with a college application? If you don't take the time to read through your work and make sure that your grammar is correct and all words are spelled correctly, then I would say you don't have somewhat of a better chance of being chosen for something that you are applying for.

I can't say much more on the spell checking issue, since I think I've made a clear point: Double and triple checking your work can get you in a better position than it would if you didn't check anything at all.

 

[knowlee]

It annoys me whenever something is misspelled or grammatically incorrect in people's writing, especially when I see it in my own. I have a habit of checking what I've written or typed down in order to make sure that it is correct otherwise it'll bug the crud out of me. D: I think this habit comes from me being a writer and also with me having English as my favorite subject back when I was in school.

I admit that there are times when I am texting someone that I will abbreviate a few words, but the only reason for me doing so is because I'm in a hurry and want to quickly find out the information that I'm requesting. But other than that I tend to use words that are correct both in spelling and grammar.

 

[Icetomeetyou]

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to gouge out my eyes and the eye of the person guilty of misspelling. I understand if English is not the first language of if they are slow. But if they're perfectly capable it's just ridiculous. Either you're lazy and you don't give a rat's tail what people think about you or you're just that dumb. What really makes me mad is when people TALK OUT LOUD like that.
What worse is when someone doesn't even TRY to correct their spelling. It's really hard for other to read what you've written if there are words spelled completely wrong. It also ticks grammar Nazis like me off. Even as I type right now I have this itching feeling that there's something wrong with at least one of my sentences.
I honestly only use text language when I'm texting becasue of how little space you have to type out every word all the way. I don't want to send my friends/family several texts just becasue I had to use perfect grammar and spelling. I also only do this when I'm imitating a way someone talks or when I'm making fun of someone who actually types like that.

And about the red lines thing: I would probably punch their lights out or laugh so hard that I peed.