Language, Timothy!

[Fatmomma99]

There seems to be a plethora of threads atm about teachers (particularly ones of English/media, etc) who can't spell or use the correct grammar rules and/or pronunciation.
Have others noted this?

FYI, I'm not a teacher, but work with lots of them. Not meaning to vent, but my DH studied philosophy at university. I don't think I'm dumb, but I understand not one word of what he studied. He was into Wittgenstien (which I can't even spell!) (and I TOTALLY don't understand him or what he stood for) but one of his "things" (which DH [and bloody DD] quote at me all the time is "meaning is use".

And my DH has this big "thing" which is all his philosophy bollocks about how language changes and evolves and that is just how it IS.

Deep in my heart, I'm a bit of a grammar Nazi, although I make mistakes all the time, and probably have in this post. But I do GET what he means, particularly now I'm on MN and so many people post threads through devices which auto-correct for them. There are SO many threads where people come back and post "oops! Meant to say ...."

So my AIBU is:(and sorry for the 3 paragraphs of waffle) Do we - shouldn't we - just let spelling and grammar "go". Because what is important about communication is that (a) we send out our "messages" in whatever form and (b) that those messages are "heard" and "understood " and (c) (if we are lucky) we get a message back.

So all those threads which are hijacked by some random outraged person saying (well, not actually saying, but actually saying!) "I'm going to ignore this thread about your dying mother [or whatever], because your device auto corrected a word and you used an apostrophe in the possessive when it should have been in the plural, so you are flamed and have a "
are just fucking crap, and we should stop them immediately!

OOO. Just noticed this thread is WAY longer than it was in my head. Sorry!

I agree totally about the teacher bashing. Appalling.

Bashing people who are obviously upset on an Internet forum because of their spelling and grammar is really poor behaviour.

But expecting high standards from teachers who, in turn, have high expectations of the children they are teaching is a very different issue. If schools think grammar and spelling are important to teach then they need to be demonstrating it by ensuring their own use provides constant reinforcement.

Most of the bashing comes from a bad place. But there have been a couple of threads on which the OP has had a hard time purely because of their grammar and spelling causing confusion.

I remember one where half the posters were giving the OP a dressing down and the other half were saying, NO, SHE DIDN'T DO X, THAT WAS HER GRAMMAR. The misunderstanding was in the OP. She failed to correct it effectively purely because of her spelling and grammar. She literally couldn't write a coherent sentence. No punctuation, txt spk and spelling errors were the issue. It does happen.