To think that spelling & grammar arent used at all anymore?

[Emmielu]

I understand that some people find spelling, grammar, reading etc difficult & to be honest i thought that was common these days but the more i look on my news feed about friends' status' & how hard it is to read what they have written because the spelling isnt good the more i think is it now down to the fact that shortening the words or making the words out how you think it is spelt is the norm?

For example, DD brought home a book that had been around all the children in her class. Kids took the book home with a teddy, parents write in the book to say what they did that evening or day. DD & i were reading through the comments and i struggled to read a few of them because the spelling was confusing and one of the comments made no sense whatsoever. Sausages was spelt "sassages", himself was written as "hiself". Am i being unreasonable to also feel very tempted to correct friends on facebook on their mistakes? Or am i strange?

P.S. Dont take this as a nasty post. I genuinely want opinions and thoughts. Not to be shot down.

Sorry, my examples were post-ref but you know what I mean re the high-born,

Dilys
That project would be interesting. There are pockets of the Highlands and Islands which were never reached by the Reformation, so it would be interesting to compare. Maybe it's been done; not sure...

seo - no, not really. Ownership and ability to read/hear read aloud from the Bible are different things.

dilys I would love to see that study if you did it, btw!

Pre reformation I'd expect the same main barrier to book ownership/reading literacy in Scotland as in England - cost. Even early printed books were very expensive, relatively speaking, so it's likely that most access to the bible/other literature was mediated through others, for economic, if not theological reasons.

And definitions of literacy are actually really tricky. The privileging of reading and writing as something other than simply a mechanical skill is more recent than people imagine, and still there are a huge variety of literacy practices employed. It's hard to really pin one down for a study.

We're slightly at cross purposes - I was talking about 18th and 19th centuries in Scotland but pre-reformation in England in response to another post. Sorry for lack of clarity.
Really enjoying this thread!

Ah, ok. I'm all at sea after the 16th C... Or possibly even before it.

I agree re. cost. I think that has been such a huge issue we just can't get the measure of in modern society. It will be even more different for the next generation who'll grow up with the internet, which means that an almost limitless amount of written material is right in front of them.

I find different understandings of literacy really interesting, especially in terms of how it's affected by biblical translation.

I've been up since 7 this morning (and will be up past midnight) working on a chapter and it is so lovely to find people on MN to ramble to about this stuff. I hope I didn't come across rudely earlier - I read it over and realize it might sound that way. I'm sorry, seo!

Just a quick question. Near the beginning of the thread Klad said the op had used speech marks instead of quotation marks. One of the few things I was taught at school was that ' and " are interchangeable. Is this not the case?

I don't think they are, bronze. I reckon " is for reported speech and ' for quotations. But the convention reverses whenever you quote, like a double negative.

Otherwise you can't clearly quote a saying. For example, if I want to quote:

'The Daily Mail says, "Mumsnet is awesome!"'

The reversal effect would show here:

'LRD quoted, "The Daily Mail says, 'Mumsnet is awesome'"'

Erm ... or, uh, that is what I think?

My brain isn't really working above the level of 'chocolate good' right now.

I need to use the two consistently.

So of the two things I was taught about grammar (the other being what onomatopoeia is) one of them is wrong. Fabulous

Oh, shit, was is onomatopoeia? (It took me ages to copy that).

It's when something sounds like what it describes, no?

I'm not at all sure about the quotation mark/speech mark thing, so don't worry until someone more informed comes along ...

I started a thread about a book like this (class cuddly toy - home visit diary) a couple of years ago OP, I was worried that other parents would unfairly judge my dyslexic daughters very poor spelling....seems I was right to worry

Yes. Such as bang or baa . Think it means I make name.

Dragon
Yes, like the word whoosh, for instance.
No need to apologise; I didn't think you were being rude. Anyway, you are called FeministDragon!

hmc - I haven't seen your thread, but please don't go away thinking people will judge your DD. I am dyslexic myself and a lot of my fascination with changing ideas about what's 'correct' spelling and grammar come from that.

Your DD might not spell well ... but that says nothing about her intelligence or ability.

seo - ta!

I do like being a feminist dragon. I'm dead ignorant ... what does your name mean?

EmmaCate - so refreshing to hear that your respect for people with poor spelling is always reduced " unless there is a valid reason like dyslexia" - I'll get my dyslexic dd to wear a t-shirt shall I?

Thanks feminist dragon....I can't help but worry. Unemployment is higher among dyslexic young people, they are over represented in the prison population etc. It often means limited life chances - and inevitably will do as long as there are spelling and grammar pedants. I realise that some dyslexics do succeed, still.....

I do understand where you're coming from.

My mum worked with dyslexic adults for a long time. The stories are not easy to hear.

I do believe that maybe people are getting better at not judging, but obviously it doesn't feel like that a lot of the time.

It sure as hell doesn't. I think people also do not realise that the incidence of dyslexia is 1 in 10 - which probably accounts for the poor spelling that many posters on this thread see as manifest. If you have 100 fb friends around 10 of them on average will have some degree of dyslexia.... But many people are not identified leading to life long insecurity about their 'failings'.....

I am linked to the BDA and Dyslexia Action on facebook and routinely see people posting that they have just been identified as dyslexic well into their adult life

Good point.

I think people really don't realize how widespread it is. And it is only a difference in the way we process text, and if we are given the right help and support, we can get past a lot of the problems. It should not really be a big deal. In many cultures, of course, you would not even know someone was dyslexic. But here they are treated as stupid or uneducated.

It makes me really angry.

Sorry, that was overly negative ... I do really believe your DD is growing up in a culture that is beginning to cotton on to this (very basic!) stuff.

I bet she will come through it all and will know she can do it.

It make me f&£!ing furious and ranty - although I am doing quite well on this thread with moderating my response . I would really like to see root and branch reform of the english language to achieve consistent spelling rules etc, but it's never going to happen