To be horrified by the poor spelling and grammar on social media?

[PuzzledObserver]

In the past 24 hours, I have tutted at the following gems across a range of social media, including MN:-

• per say (per se)
• should of (should have)
• to all intense purposes (to all intents and purposes)
• that player is literally on fire (I do hope she isn’t)

Granted that autocorrect sometimes gets it wrong, not all posters are native speakers of English and there are regional variations.... but AIBU to hope that anyone who has completed their education in the UK can actually write in correct English?

Not unreasonable at all, it's awful seeing, 'would of', 'should of', 'bored of', never mind 'was' and 'were' mixed up, 'he done' instead of, 'he did' and greengrocers' apostrophes. These are common mistakes. You don't need a degree in English to write basic English unless you're dyslexic.

YANBU. It's a damning indictment of our education system.

Only a small minority of the population have dyslexia or other learning difficulties.

Brought something and standing in a que to return it.

YANBU. It's a damning indictment of our education system

It really isn't.

YANBU

YANBU - also I read Daily Mail online (bit embarrassing!) and spelling and grammar is appalling!!

Unless Social Media is their job, I would say YABU.
I don’t write online like I would at work.
SM is for fun, why do people have to proof read, punctuate and spell check everything if they are having fun?

I don't know, a lot of people post in English even though they are from non English speaking countries, how many people here can write in a foreign language?

I once put on Facebook 'there's no such word as "carnt"'. I had two people tell me there was.

I was trying to take the piss, obviously

You'll get lots on here moaning that they should be as casual as they like, but I'm with you. It's just that now, all the people who used to write slowly in CAPITALS if they really, really had to write something down are all online.

There was someone in Mill on the Floss who "came from the generation before spelling" and George Eliot took the piss out of her all the way through the book, so I'm afraid we've been smirking at the illiterate for quite a while!

Arf at horrified.

It’s social media, quick and transient. Much like a conversation.

I cannot get worked up in the slightest if people make errors personally. Obviously if they’re in their role as a representative of a company then they should be employing a spell checking tool.

Hmmm, many interesting observations.

I thought I’d covered autocorrect problems and non-native speakers in my OP. Good points on dyslexia or other health issues which might affect people’s ability to write. (And I just had to correct the last word of that sentence, because I had written ‘right’ )

Also point taken on the way language literally evolves. But I don’t have to like it.

Agreed SM is not the same as the work place or a formal academic setting, although some PP’s make it clear that there are plenty of people who are using language incorrectly in those settings as well. That suggests they don’t know how to use it correctly.

Why does noticing that someone has something wrong mean you think you’re superior to them? There are some things in life which are purely a matter of preference. But there are others where there is a right answer and a wrong answer. Or a multitude of wrong answers.

@thecatsthecats Equally, he will rely upon grammar to convey meaning in his speech and writing. Rule number one of communication - if you rely upon grammar to convey your meaning, you haven't conveyed your meaning adequately.

I am interested in this and would like to understand more - could you elaborate, perhaps with examples?

If something’s ambiguous I tend to take the literal/grammatical meaning unless it’s really obviously meant to mean something else, simply because one has to choose something.

I suspect I may be guilty of reliance on grammar to convey meaning, too but am not sure how I’d recognise it.

. YANBU to be mildly irritated or amused by people's errors. YABVU to be horrified. To a certain extent it was ever thus. Despairing about the poor spelling and grammar of the masses is nothing new. One of the texts I studied as part of my university module on the transition from Late Latin to Old Early French was a glossary upbraiding people about frequently misspelled Latin words. And they didn't have the excuse of being befuddled by a barrage of inaccuracies on social media.

For lots and lots of people, grammar and spelling rules just don't stick easily in the mind, regardless of teaching. I should know - I teach languages for a living. Sure - they could check every last phrase they use - but they probably think that accuracy on social media isn't that important. And they'd be right.

Apologies for the essay, but it pisses me off when people are needlessly hoity toity about others' language in contexts where it doesn't matter.

I learned my lesson good and proper (appalling grammar), when on a different forum, I was a tad snarky, about a person's appalling spelling and grammar. She was not only dyslexic, she was profoundly deaf. The fact that she managed to communicate as well as she did was an incredible achievement. What it took for her to do to the level she did, was well above what it took for me to do to the level I did.

I save my ire for journalists who cannot even get the spelling of place names right.

Oh yes, journalists are fair game.

@lazylinguist..... perhaps I wasn’t using horrified literally. Hoist by my own petard, I feel.

It does sometimes take quite a while to understand a badly written phrase. I've just read a thread titled Tendinitis going on holiday tomorrow, help!

I hope I don't come across as mean. I've read "chuft" for "chuffed" recently as well. "Loose" for "lose" is so common, I wonder whether its something that teachers in England actually teach deliberately.

Then theres the non-native English speakers who inexplicably use nouns instead of adjectives. "I'm tan", "I'm chill" or the weird "It fit me" instead of "It fitted me" - can anyone explain any of those to me and the logic behind not just getting it correct?

I'm with you op, I don't understand why people find it so hard. I blame it on people not reading. If you read regularly you just absorb correct spelling etc without much effort.

I love the almost unintelligible comments on the Daily Mail website moaning about immigrants “taking their jobs” when the person commenting can barely string a sentence together.

It does sometimes take quite a while to understand a badly written phrase. I've just read a thread titled Tendinitis going on holiday tomorrow, help!

I dont get how the above would take someone a while to work out

I'd also use it fit me.

Why are you suddenly horrified about this is 2019? Are you new to the internet?

I'm with you op, I don't understand why people find it so hard. I blame it on people not reading. If you read regularly you just absorb correct spelling etc without much effort.

Jeez. Because not everyone is like you? If you'd taught some of the kids I've taught, you might have a bit more empathy about why they aren't avid readers. And no, not everybody 'absorbs correct spelling' even if they are avid readers. People's brains and memories work in different ways.

I'm amazing at spelling and grammar. It's my job. But oddly enough, I don't have any trouble understanding that not everybody a) has a brain the same as me or b) was brought up in a family that valued reading as mine did.

I blame it on people not reading. If you read regularly you just absorb correct spelling etc without much effort

I read on average 450 books a year. Funnily enough that has no effect on autocorrect