Advance apologies - a spelling one!

[TheListingAttic]

Okay, I'm being one of those posters, and am thereby effectively basting myself and willingly stepping onto the grill for a flaming.

But: when did this "ect" business start?! Every third post I read these days is "ect" this and "ect" that. It's "etc", people! E-T-C! For "et cetera"! I'm developing a nervous twitch every time I see it, and am actually going to pop before too long.

I'm done. Unleash the pedant-strength flame throwers.

Macsmurray All of those are not spelling or word mistakes in the simplistic sense, ask any of those people what words they were meaning and they'd get it right.

What's happening is that when certain groups of people type they often type homophones of the word they want rather than the actual word. They know the word, but because they are typing directly from sounds in their head they type the first word of the sound that comes to their fingers.

'Have' and 'of' are not homophones though, neither are 'our' and 'are'.

Macsmurray They are in some speech, not singularly of course, but in contractions. e.g. "should've" "should of" are the speech, which means of and have are.

Our and are are also homophones in lots of English dialects / accents, you do not know the accent or dialect the person at the other end of the keyboard has.

So we should just type everything phonetically then? I disagree strongly, especially when your phonetically differs from someone else typing in the same language.

My pet peeve is when people glibly say they feel OCD over something.

You can be obsessive or compulsive; even anal. But you can't be obsessive compulsive disorder over something.

And unless you suffer with this awful mental illness it is quite offensive to use it in that way.

I've mentioned this before on similar threads, but I simply cannot understand the current fashion for leaving a space between a word and a punctuation mark. Why so many question marks floating aimlessly around ?

The could of, should of, alot, chester draws ones I find interesting. It shows how few people read to gather information and so rely entirely on their aural interpretation of common words and phrases.

No Macsmurray, you should just stop judging people by what they type on a forum, and have a little understanding that these are common errors which are unimportant as they are understood.

It is not a measure of their intelligence, it is not a measure of how much they read, it is not a measure of the vocabulary, it is purely an indication of their mental processes in typing on forums.

The punctuation thing ApocalypseThen is probably non English native speakers, French for example has a space before a ? I believe. It's also possible that it's simply a style people have decided to use online because of the need to make a distinction between a hyperlink and the punctuation that follows it that have now been extended to all sentences regardless of their last letter.

The suggestion that these differences of style or mistakes in spelling shows people are stupid is all I'm arguing against.

No, I'm not talking about non English speakers, nor did I say anyone was stupid.

I'm not judging, I'm just saying it annoys me as I see it all the time. Now relax dear.

I am currently disgusted at discusted .

ApocalypseThen How do you possibly know on mumsnet if a person is a native English speaker or not?

Grammar doesn't come naturally to me. At school I was top of the class for English so I don't know what went so wrong!

I have almost completed a diploma in health care and it takes me a long while to write an essay because I really have to think hard about my grammar and punctuation. When I am typing online I don't put as much care into typing as I would be here forever.

I don't think I am thick though. I managed to get mostly distinctions and my grammar is improving, but it isn't something that comes natural to me; maybe it will in time.

So these threads make me cringe a little bit. Sure, it's annoying to see would/could of but it doesn't make me judge the poster or anything. Some people just type how they speak and 'would have' sounds a lot like 'would of' when I say it out loud.

I still put two spaces in after a full stop which apparently isn't the done thing any more, but it just looks neater to me.

A friend of DD2 tweeted that she had "past her English" (GCSE). No doubt she could identify and use many tools and techniques that weren't invented when I was at school I haven't heard of before (enjambment?) but simple spelling and grammar seem to take a back seat these days.

ApocalypseThen How do you possibly know on mumsnet if a person is a native English speaker or not?

I don't necessarily on mumsnet, but this isn't the only place I see it. I also see it at work, for example. I find it interesting that it's a habit that seems to have suddenly sprung up and is now everywhere.

Actually, manchestermummy, 'typo's' is correct because an apostrophe indicates one missing letter or more.

No, it isn't, HappyAgainOneDay. For that to work, you would also have to use the apostrophe when using "typo" in the singular, i.e. without an s at the end, because there would still be missing letters. You also need to write, for instance "Mrs" as "M'r's" to show the missing letters in "Mistress".

I assume it's a typo.

"Should of" / "Would of" etc puts me off a poster and I dismiss them as thick!

I got a t-shirt for Christmas which says: 'I am silently judging your grammar'.
I love it. People think it's a funny t-shirt, but it's not

I hate "been" for "being". Invariably people who do it are perfectly capable of writing "doing" or "seeing" correctly, so it's not as if they have trouble processing how the "ing" part is spelt.

Macsmurray
Nobody is suggesting we adopt phonetic spelling. Why do you ask that?

Fredfred was pointing out that the mistake is understandable because in some accents are and our are homophones. Not knowing that there are regional accents in the UK is as ignorant as people not knowing how to spell drawers or specific.

They are not Oxford commas as the OP rightly admits.

I find the use of speech marks (" ") instead of quotation marks (' ') an annoying and common error.

Greythorne. With all due respect, bollocks. Fredfredgeorgejnr suggested that as some regional accents pronounce 'are' and 'our' the same then it IS acceptable to use it, and I'm a apparently judgmental for being annoyed by it. In my accent 'are' and 'our' sound nothing alike, but as that is my accent and not yours it doesn't matter? The written English language is consistent for a reason. Speak as you wish but when typing at least make the effort to make sense. (Not aimed directly at you, just a general observation)

I frequently type homophones (mainly our/are). I know the correct word, I'd write the correct word but sometimes when typing it happens. I'm not proof reading all my posts to keep a few people happy . The world will keep spinning.

I have a new iPad mini, it's lovely, I'm not sure how I coped for so many years without one but for the love of God it has some learning to do! It keeps changing to/too, putting an 'a' in front of things & changing random stuff. Being an accurate touch typist I don't automatically check what I've written before I hit post on a chat forum... I've written some total nonsense since getting it!

ect instead of etc - just looks like a mistype to me.

(I prefer mistype to typo... mistype implies an error being made by the actual typist and you do not need to worry about whether an apostrophe is required or not)

Cross posted with you Mac.

That's not what Fred said.

You really are rude.

'...you do not need to worry about whether an apostrophe is required or not.'

Impossible and sacrilige.