Isn't about time MNHQ started deleting posts that attack people's spelling and grammar?

it deos not btoher me at all if poeple crorcet my seplilng or gamrmar. if poeple are nsaty aobut it tehy celalry hvae to mcuh tmie to sapre.

Momagain - yes, that bit is only for UK English, not US English. You don't seem to worry about it over there, and have either c for both or use an s where we would us a c (defense (US) /defence (UK) being an example)

However, it is valid for UK English.

Wandering I bet Rebecca checked it herself about 50 times before posting

...so am I the only one who checked RebeccaMumsnets posts for spelling mistakes

I generally don't like to be corrected but I have to say that my spelling and grammar have improved since using Mumsnet. I find it a bit pathetic when people are horrified at other people's mistakes. I genuinely find spelling and grammar difficult. Sometimes my spelling is so far off that spellcheck doesn't help. Fortuanately I'm pretty awesome in lots of other respects so it doesn't bother me too much.

It isnt midly rude its bloody offensive and arrogant and says more about you than them

There are many forms of intelligence.

I agree and disagree on this.
obviously there are people with dyslexia everywhere. There are people with special educational needs and people with traumatic school based back stories that render them incapable of knowing the difference between 'there', 'they're' and 'their".
However, the world is also currently populated with lazy buggers who can't be bothered to spell correctly or use proper grammar.
Tiggy is correct. Serious posts from people honestly requiring help don't need correcting.
People being judgy fuckers deserve everything they get.

So it looks like literacy is falling, because we see a wider range of literacy. But literacy overall is rising, because more and more people are using language effectively.

Well, quite. It's hugely frustrating for people from accuracy/editing backgrounds but we should really rejoice.

Tiggy! your so funi hunz!

Some of the best and most helpful advice I had on here was from a lovely regular mnetter who couldn't spell or use punctuation. Very smart woman. I hate the idea some people have that mn is only for the 'educated middle classes'. Maybe it started that way but things change. Get over it!
Not sure about the deleting though. Depends how nasty the poster is.

TiggyD I had to chuckle at your post, it's taken me about 10 minutes to work out what was going on.

YANBU - some people can't spell, are they to be banned from internet forums? it is effectively a ban if they can't get a response to the actual content of their post, just to their spelling.

I honestly don't remember there being any focus at all on grammar when I was at school. Handwriting, spelling? Yes. Grammar? No.

If someone has a genuine curiosity and wants to learn correct spelling and grammar, they will ask. Or they will read other posts and wonder why they use a different spelling (e.g rein rather than reign) and look it up.

As annoying as it is to me personally, it would be beyond rude to point it out on a thread. I value good manners as highly as I do correct spelling and grammar (although inevitably slips are made from time to time!)

What I hate, though, is the 'pack mentality'. The first couple of replies will mock the OP's SPAG, then umpteen others will gleefully copy, thinking themselves so clever and superior.

A recent thread had this, although it was because the OP took the time to include many details in a long post. The amount of replying posters who complained that it was too long to read astonished me (and I'm afraid I did bite on that one). It made me question their intelligence, tbh.

There's a time and place to point out mistakes.

A post which says "My Mothers died and fallen on the cat witch also dyed and then granny came in and slipped over in the blood squeezed out the cat and died and the my deer husband ran in and tripped over the body heap and died", should not be followed with a lecture on spelling and grammar.

As pp have mentioned text speak is the probably the most irritating thing to read on MN closely followed by leaving off letters e.g., "an" instead of "and". I wouldn't report a thread because of it. Those that are able to spell correctly, should make the effort to do so, it would make threads so much easier to read.

I have witnessed some snobbery on some threads, it's unpleasant and uncomfortable to read and often the posters get pulled up on it but I've also witnessed inverse snobbery where the posters rarely get pulled up.

Anyway, OP I think the posts should be allowed to remain and people can judge for themselves.

I think that's largely true.

It's not just about social change. It's not just more people working in literate jobs, it's different people - people aren't automatically barred from those jobs or from education by common disorders that would have kept them out in the past.

I think adults can learn grammar. If they can't, universities ought to shut up shop, for a start.

I think YABU. Not because it isn't rude and sneery to correct people's grammar in front of others - it is - but because I object to the idea that we're all such fragile ickle snowflakes that we need Mummy MN to police and censor even mild rudeness. And I'm sorry but correcting grammar is mild rudeness.

I don't agree that standards of literacy have fallen.

It's impossible to compare. Levels of literacy, in the sense of "not being illiterate" have risen massively, whatever the Tories try to argue.

The rise of social media and other formats however means that instead of only seeing the writing of university-educated professionals (newspapers, books, government pamphlets) we now see the writing of a whole swathe of society who, previously, would only have have written letters and postcards to their friends and filled out forms, the latter often with help. The bubz/hubz/lol people are evidence of rising literacy, or at least of rising useful literacy, because they are writing for a public audience, something their mothers would never have done.

Similarly, people who a generation ago would have been working in factories are now working in what were historic white collar occupations, where again they are expected to be able to write. Is their literacy as good as people in those jobs a generation ago? Perhaps not (and the free and easy 1970s/80s attitude to teaching grammar doesn't help). But there's a hell of a lot more of them, and the average level of literacy over that number of people is massively better.

So it looks like literacy is falling, because we see a wider range of literacy. But literacy overall is rising, because more and more people are using language effectively.

The idea in the 1970s that you didn't need to teach grammar because children acquire it anyway was a middle class fantasy, because it assumed the use of correct/standard/whatever English at home. It's now acting as a rather nasty inter-generational shibboleth, because people raised by educated parents in the 70s and 80s (ie, "us") have accurate English, while the main route to that knowledge, schools, denied it to many people who now feel diminished. In my darker moments I do wonder why NT adults who learnt to drive as adults can't learn grammar as adults on the same basis rather than blaming their schools, but it's actually much more complex than that and language acquisition as an adult is difficult.

But arguments that start from a position of "it was better in the past" are almost certainly wrong. You just saw a much smaller proportion of the produced language.