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Does anyone else feel this way?
thafireball
Member Posts: 200
Most of the time when I get on MMORPG.com it's just to read some random forum post about some game because I have quit or am thinking of quitting the game I'm currently playing. I just want some sort of influence to sway me in the direction of a different game and hopefully it will be one I haven't already tried. Anywho, that is not what I wanted to discuss.
The reason I am posting is I am apparently what some of you might call a "grammer Nazi." When I read most of the posts on this forum I see things like "I like this game better then the game your playing." Two things are wrong here. They are so fundamentally simple that when I see this it makes me damn near sick to my stomach because I get so upset. First of all, "then" and "than" are not interchangebly used in sentences. Furthermore, "your" and "you're" are not the same either.
It drives me nuts that todays youth and probably many of todays adults still dont know the difference in these simple words and how to construct a sentence using them correctly. I know the flames have gone from your brain to your fingertips now and you are probably in a furious frenzy typing out some inferno-like flame fest to post about how stupid it is and how it's the "interweb" and "noone cares." Believe me...I have had all of these arguments many times with many people. I have gotten banned here before for posting non stop about this very same subject and then complaining because the thread was locked and what not.
I believe our education system is failing our youth today. Most parents are less concerned with their children's educations than they are with their own jobs and entertainment. Throw a kid a video game, probably WoW, and he'll be fine in his room. We can finally sit down and watch our shows without having to worry about what he wants constantly. Our future is being brought up as selfish teenagers who feel everything should be handed to them on a silver platter and nothing should have to be worked for. It's amazing how much I sound like my step-father. Granted without him I wouldn't be half the man I am today.
What do you guys think? Am I just overly concerned with not sounding stupid, or do you all just really not care whether or not your grammar makes you come off as someone who couldn't pass a middle school English test? Now I know not everyone is like this and I for one don't type in game or on these forums all that much with complete sentences and grammatical precision, but I do know the difference between "than" and "then" and 'your' and 'you're.'
I know I have the right to be upset but I just don't know if it's justified or not. I honest to god get sick to my stomach reading sentences that many of these people write with the misuse of these words scattered throughout their opinionated, and usually angry toned message towards another gamers opinion. That actually brings me to another subject that I won't get into which is the hate that fills these forums.
Oh and for all your morons out there that I KNOW for a fact will write up some "witty" response to this with every one of those words used incorrectly, please, do yourself a favor, don't waste the time. I don't get upset when some kiddy who thinks he's witty decides to be a smart ass to some random person on the internet. It doesn't phase me one bit and just shows how immature you are.
Thanks for reading and I look forward to your responses.
Comments
No.
Usually when I make a mistake, it's just a typo. I'm either thinking about something else, copying someone, or just not paying that much attention to what I'm typing. If I make a mistake and write the wrong word, who cares. When I read someone else's post, unless it's so bad it's unreadable, I don't even usually notice their mistakes.
The thing that probably messes up my posts more than anything else and causes me to go back an edit them, is just leaving entire words or pieces of a sentence out completely. When I'm writing, I'm usually thinking of the next 2 or 3 sentences ahead of what I'm writing, before I get there, so I don't even notice I leave off entire chunks of text until after I go back and re-read them.
If a post is readable and the poster's point is coming across, what does it matter if they write the wrong work for Than or Then. Who are you to say it's not a typo?
BTW: You do realize your name is ThaFireball right? Just puttin that out there.
And the proper way to write "Than is not equal to Then" on a computer without the use of the ≠ symbol would be Than ! = Then.
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It used to bother me a lot more than it does now. When I first started visiting online forums six or seven years ago that sort of thing drove me nuts. However, after spending so much time reading forum posts I've gotten used to it and even more importantly my own spelling and grammar have deteriorated so badly that I would be too embarrassed to complain about it when it comes from others. That stuff rubs off on you after a while if you spend enough time on forums.
FIxed.
Look, I'm an English major and I don't get too worked up over little errors in forum posts. Think of Internet forums like some form of slang. It's hard to get upset about slang, it's just a particular way of speaking or writing. Even I'm not perfect, hell even the OP's post has errors in it. Emails, forum posts, text messages, are nothing to care too much about. Form letters, essays, official correspondence, these are the true measures of a person's ability. The Internet is just so informal I don't think it's really a good test of how well the kids are doing in school. I was practically beaten as a child for ending sentences with prepositions, or using the wrong 'there, they're, their.' I don't freak out over it unless I'm in a classroom setting.
I have to admit I never really understood that particular rule and I do that all the time. Sometimes, in order to avoid doing it, you have to word a sentence in a very awkward way. I mean, it wouldn't sound like the way people really talk.
For example:
That's the car he came in.
or
That's the car in which he came.
I don't know, I can avoid doing it if I want to but it doesn't feel right in some cases. Sometimes I wonder who made up that rule.
I just like to post this every once in a while.
It's the dumbest rule ever...
Seriously.
I'm not much of a grammar nazi anymore, however I do supremely hate when I see posts that are written as if they are a text message or tweet.
rly?
She's a witch! Burn her! Burn her at the stake!
It doesn't bother me. I find the "lol" before and after every sentence or posting in silly colours much more annoying, and that doesn't even bother me much. If something is so badly written that I can't understand it, I skip it. I don't really understand why people let grammar and spelling distract them when the read forums. If I can understand a post and it's interesting, I figure I'm already ahead of the game. I would be a wreck if became annoyed and felt compelled to correct every poorly written post, especially on the internet where a lot of people are basically learning English on the fly.
;-)
Very well said thafireball. It's good to see that people are still concerned with this issue. I, for one, advocates about communicative competence on the internet especially with the forums. People reading forums wouldn't always be natural born speakers of the English Language and seing grammatically incorrect words (without being corrected by other people) "may" serve as a model for other readers.
Kudos to you thafireball.
And also to everyone here.
Yah i agree to all of you dude.
I find it a difficult language to write, I read and speak english very well however when writing it its more complicated. I do have a hard time with simple words like then,than,there,their, where, were, weather, whether and etc.. They all sound the same to me however they mean different things. Too many words that sound the same but are spelled differently, very complicated, then again English is not my first language soooo maybe people are stupid.
Damn byotch dat aint no friggn moon fool, dat be a friggn space station byotch.
I really do not pay all that much attention to grammatical errors, unless they make the text unreadable. What you have to realize is there are many languages in this world, and the errored text that so offends you may one day be entered into the dictionary.
What really annoys me however, is someone with such a narrow point of view that fails to realize there is a whole world going on around them, that includes many languages, cultures, and educational backgrounds and that whether they remember "to put i before e except after c" is really insignificant in the whole course of life.
Life is short, it would be a shame if you spent it all being anal retentive over some minor grammatical errors.
Remember this if you are ever on an operating table: " Doctors have the worst handwriting." LOL!