Grammatical error abound in cyberspace - poor education or just plain laziness?

You mean errors, don't you? Or is it this one particular error you abhor the most, and you mean abounds?

I think it's both, though in general I'd err on the side of poor education.

 

Its it's yis gits!!

 

I think a lot of this trend started back way back in the olden days when we had to PAY for the number of characters sent in messages. I noticed things started going down hill very rapidly around that time.

 

That's strange; I have yet to come across a grammatical error anywhere on the Internet.

 

I agree with you, but if this is the only grammatical error that bothers you, you sure have a thick skin! And while we are on it, how about correct capitalization and not having punctuation be considered optional? Starting every sentence with a small letter is pure laziness.

 

How about the folks who make up words? Or the ones that pick a word that makes no sense in the context of the sentence.

 

The ones that really make me sad is when people use the complete wrong word. Many times it will sound the same but have a totally different meaning than the word they "think" they're using.

 

I try to remind myself that poor grammar and diction is sometimes from a writer for whom English is not their first language. The reminder stops me from posting corrections. Americans that write like imbeciles can expect employment problems, whether the cause is laziness, ability or both.

I tend to think that education deficiency is more the problem than laziness in general, because overall Canadians and Brits write much better than Americans.

 

Irony... or just plain laziness?

Irony is the OP title and content... :drum:

Leading by example in the generation of corrective behaviors... thanks for the giggle Bra.

 

Part of the problem - I'll refrain from poking more fun at jadzi's error(s) for the moment - is copyright law. Quite rightly, people and companies cannot lay legal claim to common words. The unintended consequence is that we end up with things like 'lite', and it becomes so common that people think it's really a word.

 

What god declared that there is only one right way? The whole purpose of communication is to transfer thoughts, concepts, ideas, etc.

For example: Why the distinction between "there" and "their"? Every speaker's brain is completely equipped to understand the identical spoken sound. Yet many can complain how writers (especially me) are always screwing these up. The problem is a written language that makes this totally useless distinction. The only "payoff" of doing this is to provide something to complain about.

So I'm going to take the strange position that our written language should be overhauled to eliminate many strict, but meaningless, grammar rules......assuming I can find the master authority that controls such things.

 

I think a recent editor of EB Strunk's book said it best (paraphrased): Feel free to write unconventional grammar, but the chance that you are improving on thousands of years of language evolution is remote. When in doubt follow the rules. They are there to help you write concisely, coherently and with clarity.

FL, allow me to turn your argument upside down. Just because I am forced to separate out meanings of homophones in speech does not mean written language should take on the same handicap. Speech does not capitalize the start of sentences or routinely use periods but I think most of us can see the value of continuing to use those grammars. Respect your readers and make it easier for them to follow your ideas. By the way, I think you write well and I look forward to your posts, so do not take my post personally in any way.

 

yal meen pi rnt rond

 

Good point Tony and might I add that a favorite ploy by Grammar Nazi's when confronted by a convincing idea or point that can't be countered is to dismiss it by criticizing grammatical error's. As if that dismisses any and all value in the idea, point or counter-argument. Happens all the time in FHoPol. I love it when that happens, it's as good as the Grammar Nazi publicly announcing "You win!" :rockon:

 

Valid points. I'm a fan of Steven Pinker's books. He really addresses the issues well. A lot of punctuation is necessary to make up for the inflections and verbal techniques that cannot be easily incorporated into the printed word. Those are here to stay. On the other hand there are a bunch of conventions that actually restrict communication. Not ending a sentence with a preposition was something I got "corrected" a lot on papers. It may be easy enough to correct for many sentences, but really is a cumbersome restriction for some highly technical descriptions where 3-D Orientation is critical.

Another of Pinker's points concerns words that have a very poor relation between their spelling and sound. These help nobody. It's just a torture we subject our children to since "thats the way its always been done". (Hungarian is such a vastly better language in this regard.)

Obviously the discipline of grammar enforces both necessary conventions, but also results in enforcing things that are worth changing.

 

An interesting and not altogether invalid point, but consider the alternative. Many English words are adopted from other languages, and their spellings often reflect a surprising amount of history. I'm not a fan of throwing all that away just so there's less to learn. And there are endless logistics involved in changing an entire written language: Which accent would be chosen for pronunciations to mimic with the spelling? Would the alphabet be changed to get rid of phonetic duplications? (For example, S and Z and sometimes C often sound the same, depending on the word and its spelling.) By whose authority would the new spellings be handed down? Would this hypothetical new language - Shirley, it wouldn't be English - be called fonetx?

 

Pi R squared. Pie are round.