Or am I just being picky and need to get a life?

[FlowerSour]

I was on Facebook about ten minutes ago and some of the grammatical errors bother me so much. Maybe I sound like an old cow, but is it terrible that if anyone is posting anything serious or arguing a serious point, I instantly judge them if their grammar is poor?

I'm thinking of things such as:

no know
has bin has been
dats all right that's all right
We r with u we are with you

I also hate the shortening/changing of words. Like "hols" instead of "holiday." "Jammies" instead of "pyjamas." And the worse... "Famalam" instead of family. It makes me cringe even writing that.

I think I probably am being unreasonable.

Very unreasonable.

But I shall ask anyway- AIBU?

I don't mind if you think I'm an old cow, as I probably am these days! And it will also be ironic if I've committed a grammatical sin in this post.

Complaining about people shortening things, then asking AIBU?

I cringe at "should of", "would of", "could of". It just looks so awful.

I hate people not getting the past participle correct it is really annoying.

Why let something so silly grate on you.

Who really gives a shit.

I am on a job vacancies group on FB, so this is real life companies advertising their jobs and people responding.

A lot of people seem to think any of the following is acceptable as their first response/stage in applying for a role:

"Salary?!"
"Yes pls"
"will do it hun msg me xxx"
"interested!"
"I wrote you last week you neva got bak 2 me "
[Job clearly advertised as, say, weekends only]: "I can only do Mondays"
[Job advertised at such and such company in so and so town]: "Where is it hun?"

And more like that.

Some of it annoys me. One particular woman posts every single status with every word starting with a capital. Makes me want to cry. Abbreviations don't bother me though!

100% agree! Don't get me started on TV presenters who say 'are' when they mean 'our'.

There
They're
Their

All completely separate words with completely different meanings.

I find my self checking your/ you're as I see it written incorrectly all the time, I am Scottish so pronounce them differently, but I still have to check( work amongst the English these days )

One that I am noticing more is the supposed interchangeable use of then/ than. This was from the Head of English!

What is that about?

Yesterday in the Sunday Times, India Knight, a prolific journalist and Oxbridge alumni used the word 'gotten'.

Then I knew it was all over.

And there is a national epidemic of the misuse of 'bear' and 'bare'. Surely not every single person who does this has dyslexia? I can forgive those who do but as for all the rest, no. Just no.

My pet hate is 'brought' instead of 'bought'! Drives me nuts! Though I genuinely don't think people are too stupid realise brought is not correct past tense for the verb 'to buy'

Defiantly instead of definitely! Drives me crazy. I know it's probably an autocorrect error but no-one ever seems to notice it.

You need to follow you (possibly U) OK Hun? It selects some off the worst offenders and it's great fun trying to translate the posts

Minor things piss me off such as "on route" instead of "en route", "off" instead of "of" etc.

@goose1964 that page is great, I can't actually believe the general illiteracy of some people.

YANBU.

What irks me monumentally is "should/would of". I silently scream in my head when I hear/read it.

Someone on mine uses naw instead of now. How, I don't have a clue. It took 4 tries to get autocorrect to stop correcting it.

Another says his instead of he's.

Leccy gets judged instantly

The ignorance of people who say it doesn't matter really irritates me.

If someone can't spell basic words then I can assure you that leads me to think certain things about them and their attention to detail. Just like potential employers will.

I think you're talking about two separate things tbh - 1) actual grammar/spelling mistakes and 2) adults using daft childish words for things. The former is irritating but forgivable. The latter is excruciatingly cringeworthy and is deliberate, therefore unforgivable.

I've been on the receiving end of a long and chatty text from a friend. No grammar/spelling mistakes... apart from the fact that she said "scene as..." instead of "seeing as...". I had to ignore itt but it irritated me for the rest of the day.

I write for a living.

First of all, most of the things you've mentioned aren't grammar. They're deliberate text-speak/abbreviations, accidental misspellings, punctuation errors or slang. None of those things are 'grammar'. Not that it particularly matters as we all know what you mean - but if you're going to position yourself as a pedant over language, it's probably best to use the correct terms yourself.

I find some of the things you mention slightly irritating, but that's really my problem and doesn't mean the people who do them are beyond the pale. Just as people don't use language perfectly when they're having an ordinary conversation (you may think you do, but I assure that you don't - nobody does. We all trip over words, stop and start sentences, repeat ourselves, um and ah and all manner of other things when we speak) people have particular ways of communicating on social media that wouldn't apply to a formal piece of writing.

Every social group and every method of communicating has its own quirks and it really doesn't matter the slightest if people tailor their language to the medium in which they're communicating. My teenage nieces and nephews all use weird spellings and abbreviations on Facebook, because that's the accepted thing within their peer group in that particular forum. They don't write like that when they're producing an essay for school or writing a job application, or even when they send direct messages to me to say thanks for their birthday present or whatever. They all do very well in English at school.

"Leccy gets judged instantly"

Why? It's a perfectly well established and widely used short form.

English is my third language and I don't YABU.
The most annoying moment for me was when British guy at my friend's birthday party actually said "should of". I instantly corrected him. He looked like he'd been slapped, but thanked me without sarcasm.

Couldn't it just be that some posters are in a rush, on an iPad or whatever? My fingers slip lot on my iPad so I don't use it for messages.

Language, grammar, spellings etc. is not set in concrete, we borrow words and usage from many places (even the french allow changes!) They can be assimilated quite quickly (to the annoyance of pedants). Shakespearian English is nothing like ours is it?

This thread has made me self conscious about whether I should 've put a capital E on english? BTW YABU

No, we have dumbed down massively since Shakespeare's time, reducing our word pool and getting less expressive. We really shouldn't be encouraging the situation to be even worse.

Can't we at least strive for better, while accepting that many people are lacking in these skills?

Embarrassed for myself but I remember when I got my very first adult love letter, handwritten.
My love died a bit as I noticed all the spelling mistakes.
I'm very shallow!