To think that correcting someone's spelling on a thread is just bloody rude!

[utterMadness]

And that it doesn't make you look big or clever, but like a smug pedantic twat.

Have just seen someone be pulled up on spelling on another thread who is dislexic.

People are unable to spell/write gramatically correct for various reasons.

Just because you can, doesn't make you better than them.

I don't mind it so much on MN if it's done with genuinely good intentions, but most of the time it seems to be about smuggery and one-upmanship.

InmyheadIminParis - I think you've got your posts mixed up as I haven't mentioned dyslexia or re-readng and editing.

I said that as a reader I can generally tell when someone has made a spelling mistake and when they have made a typo.

Please stop talking about 'the thread in question' or saying 'I know what you're talking about'.

If this is a thread about a thread then either tell us exactly what you are talkng about, or have a general discussion on correcting spellings!

"When I see posts which are misspelt [and not using text-speak], my default position is dyslexia".

Mine too, Chuck

Trillian it's a spin-off from the Welsh language thread.

But point taken.

Actually I've just spotted another thread in Style&Beauty asking if people judge others on their ungroomed appearance. (Lord, what would they think of me?!?)

So again I'm afraid it's all part of being in a clan. People on here judge Fruit Shoot users, bottle feeders and, as evidenced from the Sunday Times article discussed elsewhere, Winnie The Pooh decorators.

Whereas most people would purse their lips and think something a little negative about someone, others pipe up and point out the failing.

mumblechum - completely agree. My spelling is worse now than it was pre-Mumsnet.

IMO, a lot of mistakes come from posting without proofing/previewing (certainly that is what happens to me ). And as I said before, it simply doesn't matter to some people.

In general YABU.

TBH I have a problem with really long paragraphs without much punctuation, along the lines of:

i said this to my SIL and then SIL said whatever and then something else happened and her child did this and my child did that and her child reacted by doing this to my child and she reacted in such and such a way and and that annoyed me a lot for whatever reason, but then MIL said something else and i thought that was wrong but SIL was in agreement and then we went off to do this and DH told me IABU but i don't think i am really because of what SIL said, so anyway what should I do and this goes on for a huge chunk of text and I want to skim read the posting to see if it is of any interest but it's too much effort and then I can't be bovvered or even worse i may only partially read it and get the wrong end of the stick.

Again, it depends on context

what if someone posted 'i am a mathematical genius, 2+2=7654' is that ok to correct?

hmc (and others) - you have a good point. I should realise dyslexia could be a factor in many instances.

allnew - I am going to be pedantic here (SORRY) but the person who was rude to MaxyB was correcting her spelling ("here here" to "hear hear"). Maxy was using the phrase appropriately, she had just got the wrong hear.

"Spelling mistake - your brain told your fingers to hit the wrong buttons, e.g. your/you're"

mixing up 'your' and 'you're' isn't a spelling mistake, as both are spelled correctly. It may be a grammatical error, where somebody doesn't know the correct usage, or it may be a typo where somebody is in a rush and types the wrong word.

Either way, people who take pride in being pedants are total fucking knobheads who know a great deal less about language than they believe and are not anywhere near as clever as they like to delude themselves.

Thanks Earlybird, that is very reasonable of you considering I have been a bit shouty on this thread!

shortened braille (actually called contracted braille) basically works like this:

you have six dots which in various combinations are used to make up 63 different combinations.

Obviously you do have the basic alphabet, punctuation signs etc and there is a number sign which is put in front of letters to make numbers, so the number one is written as a number sign followed by the letter a, ten by number sign followed by A and J and so on.

But because braille is so bulky it has to be shortened otherwise it would just take up too much space. So different letter combinations have been used to represent different words/parts of words.

So for instance, the letter B, written within a word is obviously just that - the letter B. But the letter b written on its own represents the word "but", the letter C represents the word "can" and so on.

It gets more complicated in that there are combinations that for instance represent the letter sequence "ation" and "ity" so that when, for instance writing the word "city" you write the letter C, and then a two symbol combination for "ity" thus meaning that "city" is just a three symbol combination rather than the four letters that it is.

So e.g. if you write out community it is written as two dots which represent the "com" then mun" then the "ity" contraction, meaning that you never see the word community written out.

That's a bit of a long-winded explanation but that's the gist.

bibbity - well could be either. Could be that the person in question doesn't understand the phrase in question and hence thinks that it actually is 'here here', or like you say, could be a mis-spelling

bibbity I disagree, I think the thread in question wasn't a spelling mistake but a linguistic one from someone who was slating the OP for their choice of education for their child. "here here" vs "hear hear" isn't the same as my bad typing and spelling (which is horrific sometimes!) but normally would suggest that the writer misunderstood a phrase. Fair and relevant under the circumstances because the OP had no way of knowing the poster was dyslexic. YABU.

It is highly consistent with dyslexia to write 'here' instead of 'hear', 'there' instead of 'their' etc. That is why it is known as 'word blindness'.

Dyslexia is differently experienced by everyone (but with some aspects pretty much common to all sufferers) - some dyslexics think in pictures and thus struggle with words where there is no corresponding mental picture. Thus a noun like 'dog' or 'house' or verb like 'swimming' is simpler than 'why' or 'and' (since you can't fit an image to the latter)

blimey, wannabe, that sounds really complicated! no wonder you don't know how to spell!

do you hear the emoticons then? or do they just come out as colon hyphen close bracket?

"because the OP had no way of knowing the poster was dyslexic"

Granted, but with the incidence at 1 in 10, it might be prudent not to go gloves off haranguing people about spelling etc when it is a pretty common condition

She was saying hh because she agreed with someone else's post. She was using it in context. She just chose the wrong "hear". I didn't see her slating the op's choices btw; she was asked AIBU? and she was replying in the affirmative.

If you have no way of knowing if someone is dyslexic or not it is probably best to err on the side of caution, I would argue.

could almost make an exception for all the rogue apostrophe's though. They make me want to scream!!! and are such a common error on here that I sometime's go all Daily Mail and worry about the state of our education system.

apostrophes

sometimes

I must admit I don't always get apostrophes right, and in my case I simply do not care. I would however if I was writing something 'official' rather than on a discussion board

I was not slating the Op for her choice in education at all, I was merely trying to get her to see, that she was acting the same as who she was moaning about - and besides, it wasn't about grammatical correctness so it was lowering the tone in that instance. She (the OP) had already made a mistake in her OP too, but hey, who is checking?