Banned for Wanting Grammar!

[Squeek]

Originally Posted by Grandiagod

When I play WoW there would be no way for me to use proper grammar fast enough to convey a message in an emergency situation.

On forums if I'm making a ****ty post I don't usually bother with grammar. If it's a CT post or somewhat serious post I try to type in a way where my point is abundantly clear.

In short not using proper grammar in an environment which would benefit from grammar is idiotic. Not using proper grammar in IMs or a game isn't a big deal.

Lets get all huffy about it.

Yeah, I stopped capitalizing and ending sentences on AIM. I still put commas, apostrophes, and all the other marks in there, though.

I have a slightly different reason. People were taking me too seriously on AIM. I'd be scaring away anyone who talked to me very quickly. I wish I knew why proper sentence structure scares away people, but that's the way it is.

However, if someone is arguing with me on AIM, I have no problem adding the punctuation and capitalization back in.

Originally Posted by magewtouoitiou

This is why I always hated my language teachers: they have the nasty habit of correcting everyone, everywhere. I'm okay with that in a school environment, but when you're not at work and keep correcting others the only thing you're doing is making yourself impopular. Not to mention that noone will listen to you because they don't have to. Outside of the school, you don't have to take up the role of some Messiah who has come to save the English language from mistakes.

No they don't. I lied about being one, by the way. It was fun.

Not a single one of my English teachers in my entire education career tried to knock people down for grammar. None. None of my teachers even tried to teach proper grammar and common mistakes. I taught myself. You know, common mistakes like "impopular" versus "unpopular" and "noone" versus "no-one".

I'm not trying to rescue you from mistakes and I'm not trying to make you feel bad about yourself for making them. I would have 3 years ago before I wrote that grammar/spelling rule. Now I try to do it subtly so that you don't really notice it but the message still sinks in so as to avoid mistakes in the future.

Why do I do it, then? I've been in college for over four years now, and every class I've had involving post-college discussions has mentioned that you can lose a job you're more than qualified to have by making a single mistake on your resume. You can lose all the respect you have at this position by sending out an e-mail with a major typo.

All I see these days are kids who are more than willing to shorten every word in their sentences because they think it makes it faster to type them. The real concern here is that they're not learning how to type properly, which is why whenever a kid mentions that it's "fastr" to type by removing some letters, I mention that it's not actually faster at all when you have to make the mental conversion to your hands and that it's much, much slower to read with the mental conversion to your eyes. That's why, to reduce the strain on everyone's eyes, I made a rule stating that proper spelling and grammar should be everyone's goal.