Poll: Does bad spelling on the internet bother you?

[Apprentice88]

Verily, the lack of adherence to rudimentary morphological principles invokes disdain towards the gentlemen guilty of such abhorrent digital penmanship.

 

[TheEndlessSleep]

iveneverbeentaughthowtouseakeyboardandicanspellokcanti!

But no, I don't openly correct people online unless its really bad.
However, I never fail to silently judge them either... ...

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

As long as it's intelligible, it doesn't bother me. The internet is pretty informal and there is no reason to act like a complete grammar and spelling nazi about every little typo.

This seems fitting:

 

[John the Gamer]

It's the internet, so sometimes a few "OMGs Tis's so Awesome I ROTFLMAO" should be possible. Though it should not be used because you are lazy. This forum for instance, if you want to have a serious discussion and have a point to make in it, you'd better use proper spelling if you want to be taken seriously. And the language barrier is not an issue. English is not my primairy language and I'm doing mostly fine. But I guess you can't stop other people from Derping up the internets.

Spoiler: Just some pic for no reason at all

 

[Farther than stars]

My problem with it is that when I read, I hear it verbally. So when someone omits letters, uses numbers as letters or ignores punctuation, its like someone stops mid-sentence to interject an odd pronounciation of normal words or numbers into whatever they were saying.

Pronunciation. And... it's OK. We've all done it.

 

[Farther than stars]

It burns uss, it doess, preciousss.

This [http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comics/2010-01-04-GWS849.jpg] nicely illustrates my feelings about grammar and spelling.

I mean, surely it's not that difficult to write the words of your native language correctly? You just have to read back what you wrote before clicking "post". And it's not like there aren't dictionaries built in to everything these days. Those little wavy red lines do mean something, you know. I can deal with the occasional typo, but constant poor spelling drives me up the wall. And text speak makes me feel all stabby.

Woah! OK, always good to hear a well-defined empirical opinion. But man... Withholding sex because of a typo? That's cruel. And I'm pretty sure that methodology is a little out of reach for regular teachers. ;P

 

[Rems]

Annoys me greatly. I mean it's not that hard to spell correctly, you can get spell checkers in your browser after all. To me it is a sign of laziness and lack of intelligence or patience to type something correctly. As others have said before me i also find it incredibly hard to take someone's point seriously if they can't spell.

It's also a matter of habit, you don't want to fall into bad habits. I find that double checking my spelling and punctuation makes my responses more intelligible and lessens the chance of posting something likely to flame or just be read as stupid. By checking your spelling you have to go and read what you've written again, meaning your likely to pick up silly things that you would otherwise overlook in your rabid desire to defend your fandom/ 'highly important' opinion or whatnot.

 

[Rems]

mixing up there and they're is just plain stupid, but accidentaly misspelling onomatopoeia isn't.

It's funny, in this context you present "onomatopoeia" as your example of a word that is fine to misspell, yet this particular word is like "Aluminum" a bastardized American degeneration of the original word, (Aluminium/ Onomatopoetica) created by a large population basically "giving up" trying to teach it's original spelling and instead just rewriting the language.

This kind of laziness is much to prevalent in America.

I guess my point is, don't throw rocks in glass houses.

Don't you mean too prevalent ?

What were you saying about glass houses?

 

[StBishop]

Well for starters, Australia.

Also, the Internet.

Sorry for being a little harsh about your first thread, I was more demonstrating clarity of meaning being more important to me than avoiding typos.

Oh those dog eyes were meant ironically, so don't worry about me. I honestly value your input.
Although I still can't find any example of "every where" - not in Australian language (sorry, dialect) or even on that link you sent me. Are you sure you're not confusing the hyphen in the word, symbolising the syllable, on that page?

I misunderstood the original post.

When it reeks of laziness, yes, it's annoying. It's ok to spell "squirrel" incorrectly, but it's unacceptable to misspell "apple."

A minor pet peeve of mine is when people type "payed" when they mean "paid." Spell check doesn't pick this up, so I see this mistake everywhere

Kind of like "every where", ey? ;P
But yeah, I see where you're coming from. Admittedly, these kind of mistakes could be contributed to grammar and not to spelling, but it's still in the sense of how the word is written, so I feel it's on topic.

dyre wrote "everywhere" (or had edited it by the time I saw it first) so when you quoted and said

Kind of like "every where", ey?

I thought you were trying to correct everywhere with every where.

We actually agree, I just misunderstood what was going on.

I even went through the link and

Spoiler: highlighted the word everywhere a number of times

to prove myself right. Ironically I was also proving you right.

All's well that ends well.

 

[Jordi]

Furthermore, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that IE is still unfortunately the most used browser, and I don't think it has spell checks.

-snip

Spoiler: Edit, because it is true:

-snip

I wouldn't trust Wikipedia either. By the same logic they are accessed a lot by computers that are used by people who do not have a choice of browsers because they are accessing from schools and work PCs. So I see that as being just as biased.

I disagree. First of all, why wouldn't you want to count those school and work PCs? If it's just for leisure sites (like this one) I can understand, but overall I'd say that you need to take these things into account. Second, I think the group that uses Wikimedia is much, much more diverse than the group using w3schools. Finally, and probably most importantly, if you go to that page I linked you will see that they actually use multiple web statistics from different sources, which together amount up to many billions of page visits a month.

Those stats are probably not unbiased, but they are way more unbiased than w3schools'.

Any bias is still bias. I am also unsure how you could think they are less so when they have a huge proportion of education institution hits even though they are not even supposed to be used as a documented source for such work in most instances. They are no less biased. They even state they should not be used as a documented source.

And it is nearly 4 AM and I have probably butchered the above snipping.

Bias isn't binary. There are degrees. W3schools is pretty much only used by web developers (let's say 90%, but of course it's much higher). Wikimedia websites (including Wikipedia) are used by almost everybody. Maybe a largish proportion is coming from educational institutions, but it will not be anywhere near as high. Furthermore, those people also browse to other websites. There is absolutely no denying that the group of people visiting Wikipedia more closely resembles the variety of the group of people browsing other sites on the internet. Furthermore, like I said, the page I linked doesn't just list Wikipedia's traffic stats, it lists stats from thousands of sites accumulated by multiple widely used accumulators.

Nothing is ever unbiased, but I doubt you could find stats from any other source that are less biased than this. Depending on your goals, bias might not actually be a bad thing though. If you are building a website purely for web developers, w3schools' stats will be more useful to you. If you're building a website about games, The Escapist's stats (if they would publish them) are more useful. But if you are making something for everybody / the general public / an unknown group, the best thing is probably to look at the average of as many sites as possible.

 

[Saelune]

Only when they do not try. I mispell alot. Either because I am typing fast (or angry) or because I do not know how to spell a word. When people are just being lazy (txt talk) however, it pisses me off. (More so because pop music is promoting it now too, and rap always has)

 

[Anomynous 167]

Yes. It really, really annoys me. Checking your own posts isn't that hard to do, and it makes it much easier for the rest of us to understand what you're trying to say. But spelling doesn't bug me as much as punctuation. If I tried to type an entire post that neglected to use any commas or periods or anything and expected you to understand it at a glance that would be really hard and unfair we would be unable to tell what you are saying and it just adds unnecessary confusion to an otherwise easy post so basically what I am saying is use proper spelling and whatnot it isn't that hard and more people will take you seriously and actually read to the end of you post and you would be a better person for it.

I disagree. Checking your own posts is a pretty hard thing to do, and for a reason that I shall elaborate in my next sentence. You are your own worste editor.
One cannot trust his own mind to make a second opinion on one's work.

Well, everyone makes mistakes, but I think that people should at least TRY to use proper spelling and punctuation. It helps to give your opinions an air of respectability, and makes things easier to understand. Also, there are certain different levels; mixing up there and they're is just plain stupid, but accidentaly misspelling onomatopoeia isn't.

The only thing that pisses me off more than txt-speak and bad grammar, is when people use both at the same time.
Case and point: People that confuse "U.R" and "Your", as in the sentence "UR an idiot". It is one thing to confuse your and you're (which I hate and despise those that confuse such), it is another to mix up homophone letters that sound like a couple of words that when contracted into one sounds like "Your".

 

[Farther than stars]

I thought you were trying to correct everywhere with every where.

We actually agree, I just misunderstood what was going on.

I even went through the link and

Spoiler: highlighted the word everywhere a number of times

to prove myself right. Ironically I was also proving you right.

All's well that ends well.

Ironic is the word, for that is usually that which dominates a post about posting. It all makes sense now though.

 

[Farther than stars]

Only when they do not try. I mispell alot. Either because I am typing fast (or angry) or because I do not know how to spell a word. When people are just being lazy (txt talk) however, it pisses me off. (More so because pop music is promoting it now too, and rap always has)

You should read lithium.jelly's link about texting. It's bloody hilarious. And it's making me think twice about correcting people as well. =/

 

[Brandon237]

If it is downright lazy, then yes. Also: their / they're / there, learn them people! But 1 or 2 mistakes per larger paragraph and I look right over it.

 

[Tallim]

Mostly doesn't bother me because I'm not hung up on it. I probably don't even notice for the most part. Text speak however annoys me to death. I know it's not strictly the same thing but this whole discussion reminded me of this paragraph:

"I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too."

The brain is a marvellous thing.

 

[captainwolfos]

A typo here and there doesn't bother me; it happens.

BUT. When people are knowingly Tipn L1k D1s IT REALLY FREAKING ANNOYS ME.

A few of my more chavvy Facebook friends irritate me no end when updating their statuses. It makes me RAGE.

 

[Aprilgold]

Yes, because the internet is starting to go into texting zone of misspelling every word for zero convience. Texting works on phones for one reason, you don't have all your speed with your fingers, only your thumb, making fast texting with correct punctuation and what not somewhat redundant and more or less not wanted. However with a computer, there are tools available to cancel out this effect, and everyone at some age learned how to type properly would know that its quicker to type out the full sentence then to not do so and text it out. The reason that its faster to type out a full sentence then to text it out is the fact that you have full hand to completely spell, while texting is thumb based.

Main reason it pisses me off is because the computer LITERALLY tells you when you misspell a word, and its easy as pissing to spell correctly using the computer. Internet should be safe from this taint.

 

[Saelune]

Only when they do not try. I mispell alot. Either because I am typing fast (or angry) or because I do not know how to spell a word. When people are just being lazy (txt talk) however, it pisses me off. (More so because pop music is promoting it now too, and rap always has)

You should read lithium.jelly's link about texting. It's bloody hilarious. And it's making me think twice about correcting people as well. =/

Well, Im not that bad, but I do pride myself on not making those mistakes. Except for its and it's since 's is so inconsistant.

 

[b3nn3tt]

It depends. Typos I can abide, because everyone mistypes at some point. Although it is easy enough to read back through your post before you submit it, so there should be minimal mistakes.

But when people confuse there, their and they're, or to, too and two, I get annoyed, because I see that as basic errors that can easily be avoided. But overall, if the post is understandable, I don't get too worked up over it.