Spelling, punctuation and handwriting

[edcayton]

Is anyone else as shocked as I am by the standards of spelling and punctuation on the interweb, and does it matter?

 

Has anyone else noticed such a serious decline in the standard of their handwriting as I have in mine since using the wretched thing for most correspondence?

 

Ed

[ChrisB]

I am constantly surprised by the inability of the young to spell or punctuate......and also by the poor vocabulary of most. On the subject of handwriting though, I must confess I don't get to see much of my own or anyone else's these days.

Whilst I am happy to wear the badge of a grumpy old man (48), I am also aware that, like it or not, language is constantly evolving. We don't talk as they did in Shakespeare's times - nor would we want to; much less the English from such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I had to study Chaucer for my English Literature exam in the 70s and it really was another language.

 

I also find that general knowledge levels are declining too and have sometimes wondered whether things like the pub quiz will become a thing of the past in a generation or two because nobody knows anything any more! Having said that of course, there probably won't be any pubs so it won't matter anyway!

[grandadbob]

Yes to all questions and as another grumpy I think it shows the complete decline in all standards of behaviour including general politeness e.g. saying please & thank you!

 

Another pet hate of mine is the lack of table manners that seem to have become the norm. This is probably a reflection on our fast food & want it now society!

 

Regards

 

Bob

[Oldddudders]

A few years back, a friend of Deb's was complaining that her daughter hadn't got starred 'A's for her A Level results. Leaving aside that almost no-one got grade A at A level in my yoof, so starred versions weren't needed, Deb asked what the problem was. "Oh, she can't spell, but of course that doesn't matter!" said Mum fiercely. Daughter dun alright anyway, is now in the Diplomatic Service in one of the Balkan states, recently met Barack Obama. But can't spell. As most WP progs have a spellcheck, this may no longer be obvious. Does she know the traditional things, like the differences between to, too, two? I imagine so, but the spellcheck doesn't always get it right.

 

Those of us who went to skool in the 3R's era (that's Reading, 'Riting & 'Rithmetic for the younger members!) are bound to shake our heads. But, if no-one can spell, will civilisation stop, or even pause? Probably not.

[PhilJ W]

I find it amazing how few people bother to use the spell check facility.

[Re6/6]

15 years ago I was involved in personnel assessments and the standard back then was appalling most notably from some applicants who I would've expected at least a reasonable degree of spelling, punctuation and basic paragraphs etc.. One was a graduate applicant who had written his CV in one continuous piece without paragraphs, and the spelling wasn't up to much either! How he ever got a degree I shall never know!

[Penlan]

.....Whilst I am happy to wear the badge of a grumpy old man (48), .....

TIC .....And another thing, youngsters getting on the bandwagon of us oldies, 48? a Grumpy Old Man? you've a lot of life to go through yet before you'll understand what is really Grumpy, then you'll realise, you youngsters, that claiming our prerogative for grumpy is just as upsetting as spelling or grammatical errors in others people diatribes.

 

BTW, I was always told the Oxford English Dictionary was a guide to both pronunciation and spelling, our language is evolving all the time.

 

Penlan, Nearly 70, (OK, yes, I'm trying to be older than I am so others say how well I look for my age... )

 

My downfall was "i before e except after c", as in their, science........

[Guest Max Stafford]

It's the dumbing down bit I can't hack. People under 30 are becoming like computers themselves in the sense that you have to punch the information into them these days...

 

Dave.

[Guest]

I was in the foyer of a Voyager , waiting to detrain ( ? - modern word) standing behind two students chatting. They were discussing their futures , and how , one said , after achieving a PhD he was leaving for Holland - "that's where there's money.". Listening for several minutes , they never managed to string together more than 4 or 5 words in sequence, and yet were planning a career in hospital surgery.

Not only was there no sensible contruction to their missives, the content was also sadly awful, and mostly incomprehensible. In my school days, they both would have quietly disappeared aged 15 , never to be seen in school again. Now they plan to be top surgeons!

[Mod6]

We wouldn't normally enter this topic unless it needed calming down, but it seems like a good opportunity to remind everyone of the guidance section following the forum rules http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/topic/35-forum-rules/. This includes:

 

Don't use TEXT SPEAK it is best avoided if you want to be understood.

 

Do Use a spell checker before you post your contribution if you have a problem with spelling, or type out your contribution in a word processing program, check the grammar and spelling, then copy and paste it into the forum reply window.

 

Whilst many of us get frustrated at the decline in spelling, grammar and punctuation standards, the main issue on RMWeb is understanding that communication is a two-way process. It's no good if the writer understands what he (thinks he) wrote perfectly if the reader can't then make head nor tail of it. This applies especially to 'text speak' (for want of a generic term), and in some cases where this has been used for OPs in topics we have to pre-approve, the post has been simply binned. Same goes for 'streams of consciousness' outpourings without punctuation or paragraphs - Proust and Kerouac might get away with it, but as far as I know they're not members. Similarly, topics which consisted almost entirely of a small number of posters talking to each other in the same vein have met the same fate.

[Guest Max Stafford]

Absolutely fair comment, 6.

I suspect you may be preaching to the converted here though!

 

Dave.

[DonB]

My two pet hates are the mis-use of punctuation, and the apparent habit of touch-typists of not checking before posting. A wrongly hit key, or key sequence, really jars!!

Anyone know where Proust and Kerouac's Layout is being exhibited? (I'll get me coat..)

[45156]

All I can say is me too - I worked in a correspondence unit until it was moved, and I would say that over 50% of the letters I had to deal with contained errors in basic grammar and spelling, and many had to be perused, and re-read a number of times before the true sense could be elucidated.

 

I also had to deal with internal communications from younger colleagues written in text speak, which was incomprehensible to me, as the next test message I sent will be the first.

[Oldddudders]

Anyone know where Proust and Kerouac's Layout is being exhibited? (I'll get me coat..)

No, but in the context of this thread, the fact that we have Mods who read books is scary in the 21st Century!

[coachmann]

My children hit school during the 'Comprehensive Education' idealism of the 1970's. When I asked the eldest where he was positioned in relation to other pupils he didn't know, as the teachers didn't want to hurt the feelings of chldren who were lagging behind. So I asked him if he was in an A or a B class and an explanation was A, B and C classes had been abolished so that no one would feel inferior. I seem to recall they took calculators to school too.

 

It makes me spit when I see what passes for education today, and more especially when TV 'experts' tells viewers the Secondary Modern Education of the 1950's let millions of children down. Yeh...........??. Many of the lads at school with me did pretty well in life going into apprenticeships, opening up market stalls, small businesses, becoming managers, taking up acting, aspiring to top positions in the police, writing plays for TV etc etc etc.....All now retired and living quite comfortably in their own homes.

 

Of course there is no earthly reason why children cannot learn for themselves, but it sure helps when parents and grandparents give a helping hand.

[Kenton]

I went to one of those schools that beat it into you. I started out as a left-handed child able to write my own name and string a few sentences together. By the end of my secondary education I was writing in near copper-plate with my right-hand but would often be seen with my left-hand behind my back.

 

As I progressed though university, I learned short-hand as the only way to take notes with any speed but my writing gradually deteriorated to the point of the typical doctor's prescription. That deterioration has continued and these days hardly anyone can read my scribbles. In fact, even I am sometimes baffled. If I am not careful I wander into a sort of coded/short hand/hieroglyphic language. I write with left and right hands, sometimes in the same block of text.

 

I have been typing on a keyboard since the 70's often for long periods writing software code that always has grammar and spelling all of its own and has many languages. I still cannot touch type, despite courses, and use only 4/5 fingers.

 

Obviously writing as a communication tool is slipping away to be replaced by the typed text.

 

Do I care? No, not really. With the caveat that the text written should be understandable by those to whom it is directed, the rest becomes very unimportant and merely one group/generation/population view on how things should be done. All language evolves in this way.

 

The Americans have a lot to blame for our spelling. Especially the misuse of 'z'. Particularly as the default spell checker is US english. But again, I don't really care that much except when the words have totally different meaning (pavement, boot, ...), though even then the british english is not without its duplication of words with different meanings.

[chrisf]

Thank you, Ed, for raising this topic!

 

Sadly I believe that written [or typed] English is in terminal decline. Only yesterday I saw a sign at the entrance to my local supermarket which read: "This store will open at 6 am on Monday's". I suppose it is fitting that the greengrocer's apostrophe should afflict a shop which sells fresh fruit and veg. How many of today's young would have noticed the mistake? How many would have made it themselves?

 

Is it really too hard for users of a keyboard to use the shift key when capital letters should appear? Is the disappearance of much punctuation part of a desire to save ink? Whatever happened to education? It was there when I was a young person ...

 

Chris, aged 62 and two-thirds

[cb900f]

Sorry Kenton but I do care, the american english now creeping into our everyday spelling really gets my goat ie center for centre. We have adopted too many american ideas already and I draw the line at modifyiny our spelling. However, having just returned from a holiday in the US, I can now understand why. How they allegedly landed on the moon I will never know.

And whats this brought instead of bought. By the way my English master always said you should not start a sentence with and.

 

Pete

[45156]

I suppose it is fitting that the greengrocer's apostrophe should afflict a shop which sells fresh fruit and veg.

Yes, that is an issue which was championed for many years by the late Keith Waterhouse, who was the founder and main protagonist of the Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe.

 

I laughed like a drain at many of the late Mr Waterhouse's articles (sorry article's) about this subject which would turn up in his columns (sorry column's) in the Daily Mirror and later the Daily Mail.

[shortliner]

We wouldn't normally enter this topic unless it needed calming down, but it seems like a good opportunity to remind everyone of the guidance section following the forum rules http://www.rmweb.co....5-forum-rules/. This includes:

 

 

 

Whilst many of us get frustrated at the decline in spelling, grammar and punctuation standards, the main issue on RMWeb is understanding that communication is a two-way process. It's no good if the writer understands what he (thinks he) wrote perfectly if the reader can't then make head nor tail of it. This applies especially to 'text speak' (for want of a generic term), and in some cases where this has been used for OPs in topics we have to pre-approve, the post has been simply binned. Same goes for 'streams of consciousness' outpourings without punctuation or paragraphs - Proust and Kerouac might get away with it, but as far as I know they're not members. Similarly, topics which consisted almost entirely of a small number of posters talking to each other in the same vein have met the same fate.

 

The first line of Mod 6 reply is so true - if any of you heard Carolyn Spellman spouting cr@p in an interview on Farming Today(Radio 4) last Sunday morning, you would know exactly what he means. She spent 5 or 6 minutes firing buzz-words, politik-speak, and total drivel , never answered a single question, and was not taken to task for any of it by the interviewer - mind you she may have been totally baffled by the outpouring flood and gab-fest as well. It was the most incomprehensible , non-communication interview I have ever heard.

[pete_mcfarlane]

My pet hate is people (normally students, Nottingham is overrun with them) who randomly insert the word "like" in to conversations.

 

"So I was, like, talking to her, and she was like "yeah!", so I was like, "No way!"".

[SRman]

I teach It and science but I still try to inject some standards of spelling and grammar whenever I can.

 

There are some words a spelling checker won't pick up; one of my pet dislikes is the misuse of "loose" when people mean "lose" and vice versa. Similarly, "there" and "their" are frequently swapped. There are many other examples like these. Irritating! (Edited to correct my own grammar after changing the sentence while typing!!)

 

Does this affect the overall meaning or intent? No but it is distracting having to mentally correct by taking the context of the surrounding words to arrive at the correct one.

 

Of course, I am not perfect but most of my errors are from poor typing skills, plus a touch of dyslexia, rather than actual spelling or grammatical errors.

Another item that left me reeling recently was an advertisement on television (in Australia) for a room deodoriser that used "fragrance" as a verb! Aaaaaghhh!

[Colin_McLeod]

.....and I draw the line at modifyiny our spelling. ...

Pete

 

[stewartingram]

I find it amazing how few people bother to use the spell check facility.

Personally I never use it, brings up too many "modern" mistakes....

[martin_wynne]

Yes, that is an issue which was championed for many years by the late Keith Waterhouse, who was the founder and main protagonist of the Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe.

If you've got one to spare, there is a pub near here in need of it. Large sign outside: "Buy two adults and get a child's meal free."

 

Martin.