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?

I care, I care!

Spelling/grammar - it all matters to me.

Unfortunately, 50% of my FB friends don't know that 'would of' makes no sense, or that 'your' is not an abbreviation of 'you are' or that 'there' is not the same as 'their' or they're'.

As a result, I live in a perpetual state of mocking & derision which I have to keep to myself..

(By the way, I didn't really understand what you were trying to say to me other than that you disagreed with me. Sorry. But that may be because it's past my bedtime )

The preciseness in language you are so passionate about xstar, is the totaly opposite of why I like language.

I like it because even though it's so fluid and inexact, it's still understandable to some (as in the way english isn't understood by someone who doesn't speak it).

I don't use text speak, but like it because it's creative in the way it's changed words, at first for a specific reason, but which have now taken on a life of their own.

But tbf, I mostly adore it for fucking off pedants

It depends on the context. Here I don't care if it is only typos we are talking about. I am sure that my posts are littered with typos. That is not because I cannot spell, it is becasue I am a lousy typist and I can't be bothered to proof read it. Textspeak drives me crackers. It's irritating and difficult to read.

I am a solicitor so I am painstaking over my spelling and grammar at work as professionally it's embarassing to have errors.

I do also care about spelling /grammar when I see trainee solicitors or paralegals who have been to university and law school and yet they make the most simple errors in their spelling and grammar. It's happening more frequently.

I've also acted for client's who have been minors (under 18). If they turn 18 during the course of the proceedings they need to take control of the case themselves, they don't need a litigation friend to help anymore. I needed one of them to prepare a statement and he hand wrote it for me. He was going off to university and had passed his a-levels and yet he wrote "iv'e turnt 18 now" among other glaring errors all through his statement.

It isn't being judgmental but in these contexts how on earth will anyone ever take you seriously say for a job interview, if you cannot spell, etc. We once received an application for work experience at our firm. The person was 18 years old, her CV was ok but the covering email with the CV attached was addressed "Hi" and was full of text abbreviations. FFS.

ease up on humphy faces:o
that faux pas trumps bad spelling
face it,your on plums with this

context. this isn't professional setting.its mn
and cannot transpose professional standards and expectations onto online bibble babble.because it isnt professional setting

I've just said I don't care about spelling errors during "online bibble babble" as I make plenty myself through being a lousy typist.

if i want get stressy about content id go to work
mn is recreational yap to starngers

Spelling, schmelling!!!! But I bet we're all quite keen on accuracy when it comes to numbers :) If a bartender tried to fob anyone off that £10 minus £5.60 was £3 change... because he operated a slightly different approach to maths... because he had always had a mental block when it came to subtraction which wasn't his fault and shouldn't make anyone think he was stupid... and that £3 was close enough really ... especially in an informal setting (it's a bar, not the Bank of England)... and they'd only be 'pedantic' to keep insisting the right answer was £4.40....

dreadful analogy.no one out of pocket on mn by bad spelling
try harder

So you're saying the only way you can be upset by something is if it leave you out of pocket? The original question was why does anyone care about bad spelling. And the answer is because when something is written badly, and you know it's wrong, it's annoying. And all the rationalising in the world about why it shouldn't matter is as lame as the excuses my mythical bartender offered for not handing over the right change.

your analogy is howler.cant polish a turd.or argue about tip

Errors of spelling, grammar and syntax make life more difficult for people whose first language is something else.

I do care as it is annoying, a bit like the swearing on this forum. It shows the amount of intelligence and/or education you have had. Especially with the American spelling...eg program instead of programme, and z's being used instead of s. Never heard of spell-checkers nowadays too! Or are they just lazy, can't touch type and would prefer to type in SMS -talk, like a teenager..

As I posted on the other thread, I would never pick someone up for bad spelling grammar as that is such bad form, but I can't understand someone 'being completely baffled as to why people would care about spelling mistakes'. You're baffled as to why people want to get something as fundamental as the way we communicate right? Seriously?

Put it this way - I can understand why you would want to roll your eyes at pedants making people feel stupid for their errors. But to be 'baffled' at why people care about accurate spelling/grammar smacks more than a little of hyperbole.

There are certain posters on this very thread whose posts I have to re-read before I can make sense of them, and that makes it too much like hard work me want to switch off from, or gloss over, their posts.

When people use the wrong words which alter the meaning of a sentence, or render it meaningless; yes, you can work out what they're saying from the context, but why should people have to put in that extra work to decipher what you're saying? Again, it makes people switch off. Typos are different - we all make those.

Do other languages have the same issues with poor grammar and spelling? Do Germans use whole other words in place of the correct one ('there' instead of 'they're', 'your' instead of 'you're', whacking in unnecessary possessive apostrophes, for example)? Do they use text speak?

It must be difficult for non-speakers of English to decipher what is being said when incorrect words are used. It's bad enough for English speakers.

A missing 'and' in my very first sentence'.

I care about others spelling mistakes (and punctuation and grammar for that matter) for two reasons.

First, it simply makes the post very difficult to read.

The second reason is that in a chat setting where you cannot see the other person you only have what they wrote to to get a measure of that person. It is important for the reader to feel that the poster is relatively intelligent and well balanced because they may be giving advice etc. Poor spelling and grammar makes the poster look thick, wether they are or not.

I tend not to judge or flame bad spellers, I simply ignore them. It's like turning up for a business meeting in your decorating clothes. If the poster can't be bothered to type a coherent post then I have no interest whatsoever in what they have to say. I met my wife of 9 years in a chat room and in real life she was the same articulate and educated person that she seemed to be in the chat room. It does matter people!

For example, I just went back and reread some of the thread and now I am going to completely ignore everything scottishmummy has to say.

Spelling can be an irritant. But not to serious

Anonymous...annonymous everyone understands either version

i laugh at people who very smugly point out errors in my posts during a heated debated, but i do get really annoyed if they do it to anyone else. it just plain rude they do it to try and make someone feel bad about themselves and stupid and personally i feel it is the last bastion of a superficial bastard of a person. i am dyslexic so have put up with people thinking i am stupid spelling and grammar wise for years and have no problem dealing with it, not everyone is the same and i dont really see that anyone should need to comment on anyone else's spelling or grammar.

Ah... Gabby. You're the perfect example of someone who sets themselves up as being rather literary & intellectual, sneers at or insults those who disagree with you, and are therefore going to attract comments like this.

It's 'too' serious....

oh cog tut tut low blow.

If I read something that is littered with spelling or grammar mistakes, I genuinely think it is harder to read - it's like the message jars every time there's a mistake, and my mind stops reading the message and instead thinks about the mistake. A well written message in any format is much easier to read, and to absorb the content of what's written. Poorly written messages are harder to understand, and in extreme cases (particularly text spk) I just give up trying to decode what was meant.

I'm not talking about odd typos here - I do plenty of those myself - but if a word is consistently mis-typed, or grammar consistenly incorrect, then I find it distracting from the message itself.

For me, it's a lot like swearing - if a message is littered with swear words, then it jars with me each time, to the point where I find it hard to read the message properly.

However, I would simply ignore, rather than be rude to the poster (or speaker depending on context).

@spooks... Low, but accurate.

The only people correcting spelling mistakes should be tutors/teachers correcting those of their students.

Anything else is patronising and very rude IMO.