to be completely baffled as to why people care about spelling mistakes

[fairydoll]

Title says it all.It is totally beyond me why anyone cares about other people's spelling mistakes.
Why do they care? What does it say about that person?

peoples'
couldn't resist grin

Please let that be a joke!!

cycling christs are you pedants scrapping
does that pass for a fight

Gooseberrybushes, have no idea why you directed me to Cogito's post as my point was that harumphing about the death of the English language while making a snidey point really has very little to do with spelling and grammar. Did you think I meant that spelling was silly?

I am heavily involved in teaching people to read and spell and I care deeply about literacy. However, when you have seen people struggle immensely with spelling due to underlying disability, it is hard to take the ire and indignation that's spouted about very minor spelling errors on MN at all seriously.

It was your last paragraph: suggesting that poor spelling is not a barrier to communication, whereas Cogito's post I thought was an example, quite a good one, of how it does.

if i can get the jist i dont mind the spelling
as long as i can follow

"of how it is"

"gist"

In real life I always try to write properlt etc, but on chat forum when abr. is the norm i really don't see a problem

it was an attempt at irony - obviously lips have been curled and yawns stifled

anyhoo of course i dont care about spelling mistakes on mn
its only words on a screen after all

excellent - that is really quite funny

I think it bothers me in the way that hearing someone sing out of tune bothers me, it jars.

OP, imo there are two types of bad spelling. The first is ignorance (forgivable but hopefully allowing room for improvement) and the second is from choice, a type of lazy shorthand, text speak for example and the over use of jargon. I feel one should always try one's best, and set an example, that's why yabu imo. The alternative, i.e. not caring about the issue is the debasement of our language and therefore poorer communication. I rest my case.

Becos thay doo

Call me a spelling and grammar nazi, I don't care!

speling misstakes - dontcha git mee startted oon hoo mutch tha anooy ma. ha ha! I wouldn't get too worked up about it on here, though. It actually took me years before I really taught myself to spell, so I wouldn't throw stones at anyone's spelling but I would try to make sure children get it right. It just looks so bad on job application forms. I used to cringe when I saw how one of our managers used to spell - he wasn't even dyslexic which would be a valid excuse!

This pays lip service to the old and untrue, yet somehow cliched, idea that learning to do something properly has a negative impact on creativity. In which case an awful lot of musicians and composers can bin their practice notes at once.

Gooseberry, this really wasn't what I was saying at all. I am not saying that people who can spell or use syntax correctly are not creative. Or that all people who spill out ungrammatical stuff are creative. That is too simplistic. It is all about context. Writing can be corrected but flair cannot be taught. I do believe in correcting children's spellings in school but being gentle about it. I had very good spelling tests at school - it helped me to develop an eye for how things should be.

But on a forum when people may be writing with one hand and cooking/coping with the other? It surely does not need to be perfection?

I do have a very good writer friend who tends to fire off things really quickly with lots of typos. But she is a superb writer and can edit her own work perfectly well.

There is such a thing as flow. Making people self-conscious about it can really harm their initial efforts.

Good spelling has slipped - I am sad about it. It does matter. It's our language. To spell badly is not necessarily an indication of talent, intelligence or ability. Good spelling should never be used with a sense of oneupmanship...

Punkatheart - "Good spelling should never be used with a sense of oneupmanship..." But it is something to be proud of. And to aspire to. Unlike for example, the size of your house, the car you drive, how thin you are...

Another forum I use has a list of bizarre and surreal rules. Amongst these are:-
"Rule 22. Any grammatical error, no matter how minor, must be corrected.
Rule 22a. Any poster correcting another must include an error of their own"
It's heaven for your average pendant* like me.

Typos are one thing, (my K key doesn't always work and sometimes my brain is faster than my fingers) along with text speak and MN speak - new to this, I have had to ask what WWIFN FWIW DC DH DP DS etc etc mean... that's all acceptable.

It REALLY bugs me when I see the shop at the bottom of my street displaying a neon sign "SUNBED'S" Arrrrggggghhhhhh!

It's permanent! Did they not check!? Plenty other shops guilty of the same sort of thing - a sandwich shop named "Rob's Roll's"

FFS!

Now - apostrophe abuse.....that makes me foam at the mouth too!!

OP, I could turn your thread title back on you - I'm baffled as to why people AREN'T bothered by spelling mistakes. Seeing someone spell badly throughout an entire post/thread just makes my teeth itch as the desperate urge to correct them pops into my head. I think I may have some sort of ishoos about it, a spelling mistake to my mind makes the world wrong. How can a word mean what you want it to mean when you haven't spelt it right?

(Understand this may not make much sense, it's not easy to explain. It's almost as natural as breathing for me to spell correctly, so it's difficult to fathom why others don't - thus it's impossible to explain why it feels so wrong to me to see bad spelling.)

And yes, I judge people who can't spell. In this day and age especially, when you can easily download a spellchecker for your browser which corrects things for you it's unacceptable to have spelling mistakes in anything you post. Even if you're dyslexic. I'm dyscalculic, you don't see me using it as an excuse for my shit maths - I just use a calculator.

And don't get me started on fucking "text speak". If I had my way, it would be banned entirely.

apastrophe abuse.clever oxymoron.but no doesnt het me up

xstar somewhat overstating your anxieties.lets be clear mn is on-line bibble babble.supoesed to e funny and spontaneous not spell checked and proof read.loses somethong in those circumstances,and relly much as it irks you,its really no biggie to expect of others

there are circumstances that demand accuracy and rigour
mn isnt one of them

You're right, it IS no biggie to expect others to write well, even on MN.

Now do you see why proofreading is important?