NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm not posting this to have a go at anyone who has a genuine learning disability, or who speak English as a second language, but I am getting sick of wading through pages and pages of mis-spelt, poorly laid out, and grammatically shocking UN proposals. :(

I'd say 95% of us on this site had to endure at least 12 years of schooling, and it pains me to think that after all that, there are people who can't type a coherent, correctly spelt sentence. :shock:

If you are going to post UN proposals, then for the sake of decency, PLEASE try and spell it properly, OK? It's not that hard. Type it into MS Word if you want, spell-check it, and then cut & paste it into the proposal box if you must, but don't make yourself look like a twit by trying to get 1,000 other people to vote for your idea when you can't even spell or grammar check it.

Rant mode cancel. 8)

You remind me of my English Teacher.

I'm not posting this to have a go at anyone who has a genuine learning disability, or who speak English as a second language, but I am getting sick of wading through pages and pages of mis-spelt, poorly laid out, and grammatically shocking UN proposals. :(

I'd say 95% of us on this site had to endure at least 12 years of schooling, and it pains me to think that after all that, there are people who can't type a coherent, correctly spelt sentence. :shock:

If you are going to post UN proposals, then for the sake of decency, PLEASE try and spell it properly, OK? It's not that hard. Type it into MS Word if you want, spell-check it, and then cut & paste it into the proposal box if you must, but don't make yourself look like a twit by trying to get 1,000 other people to vote for your idea when you can't even spell or grammar check it.

Rant mode cancel. 8)

There's no hyphen in misspelt. :wink:

I'm a stickler for spelling myself, but hey, there's some battles you can't win...

I'm not posting this to have a go at anyone who has a genuine learning disability, or who speak English as a second language, but I am getting sick of wading through pages and pages of mis-spelt, poorly laid out, and grammatically shocking UN proposals. :(

I'd say 95% of us on this site had to endure at least 12 years of schooling, and it pains me to think that after all that, there are people who can't type a coherent, correctly spelt sentence. :shock:

If you are going to post UN proposals, then for the sake of decency, PLEASE try and spell it properly, OK? It's not that hard. Type it into MS Word if you want, spell-check it, and then cut & paste it into the proposal box if you must, but don't make yourself look like a twit by trying to get 1,000 other people to vote for your idea when you can't even spell or grammar check it.

Rant mode cancel. 8)

...or who speaks English as a second language...

probably just a typo :wink:

I wonder how the folks whose native language is Chinese, Finnish or Icelandic cope with this gibberish. The Queen's English is hard enough to understand without first running it through a mangler.

You remind me of my English Teacher.I agree. Another one of those people, eh? 8)

Sloppy, inarticulate, unfinished writing is a sign of sloppy, incoherent, unfinished ideas. In other words, those who write like imbeciles generally ARE imbeciles. They abound in this forum.

Now I will stand up for those of us that can not spell. I for one have never been able to spell to save my life. (I blame it on my 4th grade teacher that never bothered to work with me cause 'Computers will be able to fix it for me", but thats not my point) There are times when I type that even after rereading a post I still do not see the typos. Why? Cause they look right to me.

Then there is the fact that I think faster then I type, so I often leave out imporant words like 'and' or 'not'. The thing is I don't have hours I get to spend on here everyday and when I feel the need to post something I wanta get it out of the way. Lazy??? Maybe, but I still think most of it is true mistakes.

So I do feel bad for those of ya'll that have to read our misspelled words and bad grammer. But not all of it is stupidy. :D

I'm not posting this to have a go at anyone who has a genuine learning disability, or who speak English as a second language...

Shouldn't that be "anyone...who SPEAKS English"? We don't ordinarily correct grammatical errors, but somehow it seemed appropriate here.

I'm not posting this to have a go at anyone who has a genuine learning disability, or who speak English as a second language, but I am getting sick of wading through pages and pages of mis-spelt, poorly laid out, and grammatically shocking UN proposals. :(
Actually, people that have English as second language tend to care more about spelling... they will put more effort in their spelling to make sure they don't look like foreign stereotypes. Also, they didn't grow up with influences of dialects in that language.

I'm Belgian... Flemish to be precise, and I think my English is as good, if not better than my Dutch (which is supposed to be the official language in Flanders. They always forget we still speak Flemish, and that it's not completely the same as Dutch).

But I fully agree with your rant... I mean, if English and American (and all other Anglophonic) people can't even write their own language as well as foreigners do, then there's definitely something wrong. Especially because the errors they make are mostly just out of sheer laziness.

(btw... I'm the kind of guy that edits one of his posts if he spots a mistake in it, even months after it was posted :p )

I know, that there are people, who sometimes mess up the words, I know that I am one of them, but I mean: It is most important that you can understand what is meant. I guess here does everybody the best s/he can.

I thought that while we're on the subject of grammar and spelling, I would mark (with asterisks) all the grammatical errors I found in the parent post upon reading it the first time. This is intended to prove that English grammar is trickier than even the best-educated English speakers may believe, and that maybe we should relax a little. The intent is *not* to be a complete jerk.

I'm not posting this to have a go at anyone who has a genuine learning disability, or who speaks* English as a second language, but I am getting sick of wading through pages and pages of mis-spelt*, poorly (laid out)*, and grammatically shocking UN proposals. :(

I'd say 95% of us on this site had to endure at least 12 years of schooling, and it pains me to think that after all that,* there are people who can't type a coherent, correctly spelt sentence. :shock:

If you are going to post UN proposals, then for the sake of decency, PLEASE try and* spell it* properly, OK? It's not that hard. Type it* into MS Word if you want, spell-check it*, and then (cut & paste)* it into the proposal box if you must, but don't make yourself look like a twit by trying to get 1,000 other people to vote for your idea when you can't even spell or (grammar check)* it.

Rant mode cancel. 8)

Noways, I never can't scarcely spell correctly nomore.

I used to could.

Actually, as near as I can tell, there are dozens of "Englishes." By far, the worst of those is "formal, written, standardized English." I just does not seem natural.

The funniest thing is all through high school, the teachers literally said don't worry about grammar and spelling. (They were under pressure from the state government to push for timed writing styles)

They said they felt that most of the students were "wasting" too much time worrying about grammar and spelling and less about content. As far as they were concerned, grammar and spelling are a luxury they didn't want to teach or had time to teach. I think I was literally failed by the system. :cry:

I'm a Jew and I can speak English

Roycelandia got his ass flamed

This is completely OOC, but when I was in eigth grade (14 years old, for those of you not from America), I was required to memorize all the major grammatical errors made in the English language. Most of these are so insignificant that I feel I've wasted my time, and yet, hearing the mistakes today drives me nuts. For example, it is redundant and improper to say "reason why" as in "This is the reason why that happened." Also, one should say "try to" and never "try and." While I believe that American students need more schooling in Englsih grammar, I definitely feel this can be taken to extremes. I always felt we learned these rules so that if we were great authors some day, we could break them.

In a freak turn of events, there are people here learning English as their 3rd language that spell better than many Americans and some British here... It's sad, really.

Well, French is my second language, and I find that I am better at their dictees, which are dictation tests, than many of the French, and their society seems to value spelling quite highly.

Dude, I can spell correctly anymore: C-O-R-R-E-C-T-L-Y-A-N-Y-M-O-R-E

haw can i speel corectly i do not undrestand, jou racist warmongar man

As someone has correctly pointed out, there are several different types of English.

Amazingly, American English is NOT the only form of the language! Other countries speak the language as well, most notably England (hence the name of the language), Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, and large chunks of East Africa. They all have different ways of spelling words (cf. English/Aust./NZ "Colour" with USA "Color".) We can debate who's right until the cows come home, and still not be any closer to the answer.

So, for starters, anyone who thinks that the word "mis-spelt" isn't hyphenated would be right if they were coming from an American point of view. However, UK and New Zealand English hyphenates many words, including mis-spelt, no-one, and mis-fire, not to mention nit-pick (appropriately!), To name a few.

Anyway, aside from nit-picking my original post, I'd appreciate it if we could get back to the original topic- which is, UN proposals that are almost incoherent because of appalling spelling and punctuation etc.

No-one's perfect- as you can see, even I made a few errors in the original post. And I'll admit that (but I'm not conceding the hyphen in mis-spelt. It's correct for NZ English).

The problem I'm getting at are UN proposals along the lines of "i think we shood ban crime coz crime is bad n neone who does crime shood go 2 jail n stay ther 4eva". NOT the odd spelling or grammar mistake, but people who obviously haven't put any thought or effort into their proposal, yet expect us to seriously vote for it (or "4 it" as almost anyone (ne1?) under 17 would put it... :lol: )

So does anyone have any INTELLIGENT thoughts on this, or do you just not care? Either is fine, but I don't want this turning into a "nit-pick little thing that someone posts" thread.

I don't know. I value the ability to speak and write your native language correctly pretty highly, and I'm always saddened by the fact that the internet, this fantastic source of information, this amazing place to publish without all the trappings and costs associated with print publishing, is so incredibly awash with people who constantly use poor grammar and poor spelling, not just because they don't know, but also because THEY DON'T CARE.

Now, I'm no more perfect than anyone else, but if you don't care enough about what you're posting to use proper grammar and spelling, to at least TRY, maybe you don't care enough to post it in the first place. Jack Kerouac never used perfect grammar and I don't think perfect grammar is called for in most situations, but SERIOUSLY. Have you guys been out there? U for you, Ur for you're, and the abbreviations are freakin' out of control.

people who obviously haven't put any thought or effort into their proposal, yet expect us to seriously vote for it split infinitive!!! tsk tsk tsk...


No, in all seriousness I do agree with you. It boggles the mind how much incomprehensibility there exists on the Internet. And it really is that: incomprehensible; not just difficult to understand, truly bloody incomprehensible!

But what can be done about it? Are you volunteering to edit personally all UN proposals before they make it to the list? In any case, doesn't it gratify you enormously when you see the millions of people who can never hope to earn as much as will you?

I think that overall the spelling on NS is quite high, much higher than other forums!

Poor (deliberately poor) spelling and grammar could be made grounds for deleting a proposal, along with duplication, game rules etc. which are already grounds. Some poor mod is already stuck with revising these anyway, it seems. This would add just one more item to the checklist.