Appalling grammar influx

It's even better when it's spoken in a sentence that ends with a rising inflection ('uptalk') so that it also sounds like a question.

"So I was chatting with Sarah yesterday?"

It is mind-bending and causes me to have to pause momentarily to process it at times.

It's as if there's a bit missing before the sentence - something that explains why they were chatting with Sarah - and then apparently it's also question as well.

Re the advertising point, for the first time ever I am seeing constant ads for mumsnet on Facebook - so maybe that’s drawing a lot of badly grammared plebs in :D

Brilliant! 🤣

Inbetween is not a word.

Nor is:
Alot
Abit
Incase
Eachother

However, today and tomorrow were originally "to day" and "to morrow", and an apron was originally "a napron", so I do see your point.

I can only hope that your post was deliberately riddled with poor grammar.

Relax OP! 76% of readers agree with you..

The starting of sentences with "So" seems to be a relatively recent thing to me. I've noticed it on here for a while, but I recently heard someone say it. When spoken, it sounds as though it's used as an emphasiser, but I'm not sure if that's why.

Ha me too. Left over twenty years ago have no desire to live there again. No family left there now either, all moved or passed away.

I moved to Sussex more than 30 years ago, and doubt if I could find my way round Croydon now. And a lot of the bus routes have different numbers, so that would have me stumped as well.

I get a little nostalgic when I see the Croydon skyline in the bit between the programmes on ITV though.

I also hate poor grammar and textspeak. With so much technology, having your sentences and spelling sorted there's really no excuse.

Reading good books build vocabulary, spelling and sentence construction.

Apparently the tabloids know their readership, not more than two syllables to a word or five words to a sentence.

@LakieLady I should have said hello from one Croydonian to another 😁

I spent forty years in Croydon and no one said ‘you was’. We might be a bit Sarf London at times but everyone I knew or worked with spoke properly (and I was state educated).

I'm from Croydon as well @LakieLady and @NeverDropYourMooncup. Most of my class lived in New Addington. I also had friends from Shirley so I grew up with those accents.

It's only the past two weeks or so that I've noticed the increase in these posts.

YABU for this part only.

New Addington, Shrublands, Monks Hill and the like were initially populated by many families who had been bombed out from London - a lot from Bermondsey/Old Kent Road, but also a significant number from Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, brought by the promise of modern rural homes (once the prefabs came down) and no pollution.

I think that as people grow up seeing the internet as somewhere for advice, those with lower literacy are also going to try to get help.

Ironic indeed 😉

You're not wrong, OP.

I can't believe the number of "too" and "to" errors, as well.

And don't get me started on the people starting posts with "So..."

Bun fight starter

...advice to someone...wh....

Ironic.

I get my spelling corrected sometimes. I'm visually impaired and even when I point that out people still like to moan about tiny spelling errors. It's pathetic.

As for the whole 'how can someone think infront is a word' inbetween is a word so why can't infront be? Language is constantly evolving and changing and often what pedants moan about is the natural progression of a language. Infront might be one person consistently making a mistake. But if English did evolve in such a way that infront was recognised as a word eventually really what would the problem be?

I’ve noticed this recently too. Not just spelling/grammar variations or mistakes (which would be cunty to pick on) but a few long OPs that are completely incomprehensible. So incomprehensible that it almost seemed deliberate, but I would have no idea why someone would do that.

I get irritated with the incorrect use of 'your' 'you're', 'to' and 'too' etc as well as could OF. It's could HAVE ffs.
But I'm an intolerant old fart 😂

@LakieLady in Cumbria we use "drovv" instead of "drove".

Why is it embarrassing? It's not the poster's fault if their education failed them, if they have some speech and language difficulties, undiagnosed dyslexia, or English isn't their first language. It's still probably a damn sight better than my French or German.

If the standard of education in schools these days is anything to go by, it'll be the norm soon. I've seen shocking howlers in written work from younger colleagues in recent years, and some of it from people with decent degrees from RG universities.

I think the standard of written English has declined with the demise of teaching Latin, tbh. I used to have a job that involved vetting reports that went to council committees, and the best written stuff always seemed come from people who'd done Latin at school.

Although I still wince inwardly at a split infinitive, or using "less" where it should be "fewer", I regard it as my failing and down to a certain snobbery on my part.

Regardless of dialect, people should know that we don't write the way we speak. Everywhere has particular turns of phrase or words that are largely incomprehensible to those outside that area. I love language and always find things like that interesting. But it's not ignorant to expect people to adhere to a reasonable standard of spelling and grammar when writing in an international forum for a general audience.