Last Updated on August 23, 2020
I belong to a web forum dedicated to a particular daytime game show. It’s an active site that always features many discussions going on at the same time, and because the users vary in age, location, background and life experience, some users post things that are replete with grammatical and spelling errors.
Sometimes, someone will post an entire paragraph with no capitalization and — even worse — no punctuation!
Imagine trying to make sense of that! Yeah. Not easy.
A recent thread popped up in which some people complained about those who take the time to correct others’ mistakes. We don’t need no stinkin’ Grammar Police, the thread seems to say.
Those who offer corrections — and once in a while, I’ve done it in the past — are immediately painted as bad guys who are only out to ridicule.
Unless they’re trying to clarify those long, rambling run-on sentences, clearly written by people who are just plain lazy. Then they’re not the bad guys: it’s the ones who can’t be bothered with basic rules of usage who are.
Ah, double standards.
How quickly we assume that people who try to offer assistance are out to ridicule. And how quickly, apparently, we assume that people who may not have a handle on proper grammar are just being lazy.
The sad fact of life, as I pointed out there, is that we are often judged on writing, particularly in cases of online forums, where one’s writing is the only way others can get a glimpse of the person. It’s unfair, but it’s often true.
It’s equally sad to see some of the emails and, even worse, cover letters replete with grammatical and spelling errors that we get at the station from people asking for clarification of a story or from people seeking employment in a communications-driven industry.
If I make a grammatical blunder there (or here, for that matter), I’d rather know.
Patrick, I agree about capitalization and punctuation, but what are your thoughts on complete sentences? I ask because sometimes I totally don’t use them. I just say the meat of my point and leave it at that.
I can almost see you cringing right now!!!!!!
Ha! No, I'm not cringing, because there are times when it's perfectly valid to use an incomplete sentence.
Like this.
I don't even mind words like ain't when you're trying to make a point. My bigger point is that when you want to take part in an online discussion, you ought to be willing to take the extra time to make sure that you're understood. I've seen posts where there is no capitalization and no punctuation at all…as if the person expected me to just mentally mark off where sentences ended as I went along.
If they're not willing to invest a minimal amount of time in making their message clear, why should I be willing to invest any of my time in trying to decipher it?
Grammar is one of my weak points, all my life I have been struggling with dyslexia. I use the wrong words or leave words out or I mix up the order of the words. When I write something for school, I proofread it once and let it sit for a day. Then I proofread it again and let it sit for another day or two then proofread it again, by then (I just proofread this and found that I typed “but then” instead of “by then”.) I have found most of the errors. If it is a term paper, I give it to friend to proofread one last time.
When I write comments or emails, I don’t go through that process. I just proofread read it once and as a result there are words left out or I use the wrong word, I don’t catch because my mind inserts them or sees the correct word. You can usually tell if my blog entry we pre-written a couple of days before I published it by the number of errors.
Occasionally I do get comments about my grammar on my blog, I just thank them and correct it. However, I do appreciate the comments because they help me to learn, but I just wish they would email me the comments and not post them.
I do agree with you about capitalization and punctuation, it does make it more readable. I also like spaces between paragraphs; it breaks up the lump of words into manageable thoughts.