To be so irritated by poor spelling and vocabulary?

[Positivevibesonlyplease]

OK, it could be weeks of lockdown having finally got to me, but when I just read two posts with the phrases, ‘couldn’t get passed,’ (meaning ‘past’) and ‘by her own omission,’ (meaning ‘admission’), I felt compelled to start an AIBU. It’s bad enough reading the FB ‘Your doing great’ and ‘I love you’re new dog’ posts. Oh, ‘their’ much worse at spelling on FB...etc. Yes, in these turbulent times, I know I shouldn’t be wasting my energies on such crap, but sometimes focusing on trivia keeps us sane. So, AIBU? Anyone else as irritated as I am?

@EmeraldShamrock

I think the easiest way to remember, is if you can count it, it's fewer. If you can't, it's less Great tip shared with kindness every day is a school day on MN.

Glad you like it! It's one of those errors that irritated me. I could use the words correctly, but found it hard to explain how it worked, until someone gave me the counting explanation!

It works on the same noun in different contexts too. So if someone's about to dump a big splodge of rice on my plate, "can I have a bit less please" is right. But if (for no practical reason I can think of!) someone is talking about grains of rice, they'd say "fewer grains of rice" because grains are countable.

YANBU. It really annoys me. It also annoys me when people say language/spelling changes and evolves and it doesn't matter. It seems it is getting to the stage where sometimes I am not sure what the speaker/writer means at all, so I'm of the opinion that spelling and proper grammar are essential in order to communicate properly. I must confess though that, as I am becoming an old crock, I sometimes have to check spellings and grammar as I am apt to make mistakes these days myself.

ooops I meant "can I have a bit less rice please"

This is why pre-editing is good!

It annoys me most with journalists and reporters. Sometimes I think it is deliberate, to mislead the reader.

I am dyslexic and it had taken a lot of work to use correct homophones. Many people could learn them in a short time but don’t bother.

Mrsjoyfulprizeforraffiawork

“It seems it is getting to the stage where I am not sure what the speaker/writer means.”

I am sorry, I don’t buy this.

It is very rare for spelling and grammar on MN to be so poor that the writer can’t communicate.

It’s the last acceptable refuge of snobbery. It’s a knee jerk class revulsion. Let’s call it a spade a spade.

Be quietly irritated by all means. But people who derail a thread where someone is clearly in distress to talk about the proper use of the semicolon are arseholes. Context and compassion are everything.

@mrsjoyfulprizeforraffiawork

YANBU. It really annoys me. It also annoys me when people say language/spelling changes and evolves and it doesn't matter. It seems it is getting to the stage where sometimes I am not sure what the speaker/writer means at all, so I'm of the opinion that spelling and proper grammar are essential in order to communicate properly. I must confess though that, as I am becoming an old crock, I sometimes have to check spellings and grammar as I am apt to make mistakes these days myself.

As someone who has English as a second language and who had zero SPaG teaching, I am yet to come across a post on MN that I couldn’t easily understand.

I do this all the time because I type fast and don’t check - I’m just writing a message on MN, not a job application, it’s just not important enough to SPAG check, sorry.

YANBU but people on here will call you a cunt for caring.

It seems it is getting to the stage where I am not sure what the speaker/writer means.

I think if you can’t read between the lines of a bit of incorrect grammar and spelling then that says more about your grasp of the English language than theirs.

I think it’s unfair to expect everybody to have the same level of education and grasp of the written language as you. Some people really struggle with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, does that mean that they shouldn’t be allowed to post online?

If you type “too fast” and then you notice your mistake - hmmm - why not correct it?

Bought and brought does my head in every time!

•Countable noun - fewer ( people, chairs, upsets etc )

•Uncountable noun - less ( rice, grass, sand etc )

The difference between fewer and less is usually clear when you study types of nouns.

@candilemon I would usually notice when I return to a thread later in the day and read from my last post - usually it your/you’re or a missing word. I don’t tend to read back as I go, I just press post.

When I was at school, our spag wasn't corrected. My mum was appalled that my spelling wasn't improving by p7, so she asked my teacher what was going on. She told her they weren't allowed to correct spelling mistakes. I don't ever remember any punctuation being drummed into us, apart from full stops and capital letters. Even then it was a bit lax.

Minor spelling errors don't bug me - dyslexia exists, people type fast, autocorrupt messes things up.

I can barely read massive text walls with paragraphs and haphazard punctuation and just click away from threads with OPs like that.

Also, am I the only person to be driven mad by coinages like 'The Denmark football team'? ('No! No! It's the DANISH football team!')

Im dyslexic i also hold a degree and work in a profesional job. Stop judgeing people

*it’s.
I even made the effort to read that one before posting I think generally it’s easier to spot other people’s mistakes than your own. You read back what you think you’ve written rather than what you’ve actually written, especially when you’ve only just written it.

Yanbu. I think it's rude to point out spelling mistakes in individual posts. But advise and advice please learn the difference. And lose and loose. Also most common spelling mistake on here is definitely definitely. But not being able to spell very well doesn't seem to be as big a deal as it used to be. Tony Blair anyone.

I understand that there are people with bad spelling and grammar due to other issues - lack of education in that area, dyslexia etc but what amazes me is when you get people who writes perfectly but then makes one huge omission with one word. For example I have a really intelligent friend who writes perfectly... Apart from when he uses his/he's. He would write "I'm going to he's house / his coming round tomorrow". I'm always flabbergasted at how he doesn't know that's incorrect

I really don't understand why some people just don't get it and what's worse, they don't seem to care! I frequently see all the errors you have listed on SM, on posts and comments made by people who went to the same senior school as me.

and many of the culprits are the people who that thought school was a load of shit and were disrespectful teachers. Their sentiments were

However, as I've got (yes 'got' absolutely NOT 'gotten') older, I think perhaps I take it for granted that I am able to distinguish between 'their/there/theyre' etc. Perhaps some people's brains don't work in the same way? I was read to a lot from a very young age and have always loved books. My mum loves books, my maternal grandmother loved books - it's been passed down from generation to generation in my family. Perhaps other families didn't place such great importance on reading? I was likewise taught the importance of how you present yourself. We have regional accents in my family, but great importance was placed on grammar.

Sorry, their sentiments were shared by their aggressive and confrontation parents.

I am more concerned with the downward spiral by 'publishing' threads with basic errors. If people who struggle with grammar or spelling read 'should of' 'could of' and loose instead of lose on these threads so often, they will think it is correct. If MN was a better app, it would highlight errors for correction before posting.