Would of; could of; should of - why? Just WHY? Makes my teeth itch, AIBU?

[LadyStoic]

I'm convinced I never saw any of the abominations above on MN a decade ago, even a fecking year ago. Now popping up like a persistent bloody virus

Just me or should I get my coat?

Oh, and another thing, if folks must use it, why the fuck do they I swear we are being infiltrated spell 'hon' as 'hun'?

For the same reason people say "break lights" are on their cars

I defiantly agree.

What bibbity said.

Also, I disagree with this: Higher standards of written English would help everyone, however. It matters. It really does.

I know you say you've experience of dyslexia, but it's bloody rude to presume that this is to do with 'low standards'. That suggests people just don't care. And many do, but still struggle. Relaxing your pedantry is what would really help!

I seriously doubt it that everyone with shit grammar and spelling has dyslexia

I went to one of the worst state schools in my Borough so I saw exactly how these people came to be messing about in every single fucking lesson, never doing homework, taking the piss out of people who read books because it's "boring", bullying "boffins" who didn't text lik dis all da time xx Zero interest from the kids or from home to improve. Teachers overwhelmed. And so it went on for 5 years until these people went out into the world having never bothered to learn standardised spelling and grammar and then joined mumsnet to continue to piss me off--

Do people who never bothered to learn punctuation bother you too, baboosh?

I've seen more than one poster refer to a 'chester drawers' recently -

My DN (who did a degree in journalism) kept writing 'should of/ would of' in blog posts. When I pointed it out to her, she insisted that her lecturer told her it was 'a Northern colloquialism'

In linguistics, if something is repeated often enough, then eventually it becomes an accepted part of the language. That's what will inevitably happen with 'should of/would of'.

I agree with you. I really don't understand how so many people can emerge from 11 years of education thinking this is correct. I also agree that the dyslexia excuse really doesn't wash, and in fact is quite offensive to genuine dyslexics. As for the suggestion that auto correct may be responsible, words fail me.

I really think we should make more effort, because most of us are parents or hoping to become parents, and our children live in an age where poor grammar is going to hold them back. It's therefore dangerous for us to let them think that terminology like this is OK. And really, if you can't be bothered to type "have" instead of "of", you are extraordinarily lazy.

Has anyone mentioned clicks instead of clique?

mother - 'could of' might well become accepted. In medieval English, people sometimes use similar phrases as alternatives to 'could have,' which similarly substitute an unrelated part of speech that is phonetically identical to 'have' in their dialect.

So this has been going on for a very, very, very long time.

I also agree that the dyslexia excuse really doesn't wash, and in fact is quite offensive to genuine dyslexics.

Phrases like 'the dyslexia excuse' are offensive to dyslexics, actually.

No one is suggesting every single person who makes these errors, is dyslexic. But what people are pointing out is that, when you equate these errors with laziness or stupidity, you'll risk making people who are dyslexic feel they are lazy or stupid.

I don't follow you. Yes, we're using the written word more, but I don't follow how it's less obvious in modern writing than medieval writing. Do you just mean we see it more?

Of course you hear people say it. It's how some people pronounce the word. What's wrong with that?

Again, so far as we can tell from the evidence, people have always pronounced things in different ways, and have always written things down according to their oral/aural understanding of what's being said. It's not a bad thing - it's how written language develops.

Sorry, 'less obvious in medieval writing than modern writing'.

My oldest son was labelled at his school 'the village idiot' as he just can't spell.

He has a high IQ and we worked very hard with him to learn by heart the most used words.

He was crippled for years by self dought and lack of confidence and was diagnosed with dyslexia aged 11 after we finally paid for a diagnosis. Schools arnt interested as a diagnosis requires extra help.

Ds2 similar but dds are excellent spellers.

This thread is typical of the language surrounding dyslexia and I fully expect people like babooshka and others to continue with their piss taking.

Try for some humanity

Yes FeministDragon quite right.

And 'making my teeth itch' makes you sound idiotic.

As for spelling mistakes and typos on here most people type quickly in between jobs and you know RL and off phones.

How fucking sad that there are people like you judging posters on spelling and grammar and not reading the posts or offering help or opinions but sitting behind your key board in a smug superior way thinking you are so clever and better than others.

Bet you are so popular in RL.

YANBU.

Yes, I agree spoken variants are less obvious than written variants.

No, you're wrong about medieval writing. This is something I do know about. It is just about possible that people completely unable to read and write spoke a slightly different dialect from those who could read and write (though that includes far more than just the 'very rich'). But, there's a lot of writing that is addressed to broad audiences including the very poor, and clearly, the spellings in those texts must have been understood, when spoken out loud, by that group. So they cannot have been so very different.

Your assumption about modern education is also incorrect. Plenty of people didn't receive a good education, which isn't their fault.

I do see you'd not point out mistakes to an individual and I do respect that. I just think that this thread is crossing the line between 'ooh, isn't spelling interesting' into being quite nasty about people who make mistakes. And you cannot expect it not to upset people who feel they're the ones inadvertently annoying you by their errors.

Those types of errors don't bother me. I still know what the poster means, which is all that actually matters on a chat forum.

I can't read posts that haven't been checked and are full of typos. My brain gets tired trying to decipher whether the poster means to say 'out' or 'put', 'can' or 'can't', and what is 'I dt' meant to be?

When it's three or four typos in every sentence it's just too hard sometimes to work out what they're saying, so I give up.

I'd like to think that every single MN poster has made at least one (more in my case) typing or spelling error at some point during their time on this forum. It doesn't make them stupid or thick, careless perhaps (I speak mainly for myself) but sometimes I/we try to post too quickly.

It's really not the end of the world.

How do teeth itch, is it the same as when piss boils?

Like a pp I also went to a shit school and so my spelling and grammar is pretty rubbish. I really struggled to help my dd revise for her SATs last year and hadn't even heard of half the stuff she was doing! While I think it's quite nasty if individual posters are pulled up, I quite like threads like these as I usually learn something. Although I'm still not entirely sure of when to use lose/loose and less/fewer.

I do struggle though when some posters don't even make an attempt at punctuation, I find it quite hard to follow their post and often have to read it again to understand what they are trying to say.

Off topic, but just realised I must be old as I was taught times tables by rote.

The other issue is predictive testing. Add in the fact that you cannot edit even if you have been punked by it and it is a little annoying.

I do remember though my mum drilling the difference into me between may I/can I, and sat/sitting.

My personal bugbear at the moment is 'I am going x', instead of 'I am going to/to the x. For 'I'm going shops'. No, surely your either going shopping, or going to the shops.