Isn't about time MNHQ started deleting posts that attack people's spelling and grammar?

[cuntycowfacemonkey]

(In advance I will say any of my posts are likely to have spelling and grammar mistakes)

It's such a shitty thing to do and often it is directed at poster who then feel they have to explain themselves and disclose they have dyslexia. I don't understand why MN tolerate people with potential disabilities being mocked in this way?

Why can it not be regarded as a personal attack and such comments deleted. Very often the arses that post comments about another posters spelling bring nothing else to the thread and usually it derails the thread and the OP's original issue gets lost in the ensuing bunfight.

Yes Debora. I see that sort of shit loads.
Help I think my husband is having an affair with my friend. There always together and he says......

Next post - they're. Hth

Well no it doesn't help. You utter utter cunt.

I'd rather be as thick as pigshit with an ounce of decency and compassion than have an iq of 160 and be a total wanker .

Someone upthread pointed out that the level of sneering is rather lower when discussing GCSE-level maths, while there's a pile-in over GCSE SPAG.

That people who are willing to engage in minute analysis of other people's grammar would be highly offended if told that being unable to differentiate a simple polynomial made them innumerate is CP Snow's "two cultures" writ large. Admit to struggling with grammar and many people will sneer. Boast of find maths pointless and you are seen as interesting and insightful.

Similar arguments apply over physics versus history (consider the general reaction to confusing the first and second world wars with confusing neutrons and neutrinos) and music versus programming (A Level music: talent, A Level CS: nerd).

The irony is that mathematicians usually have perfect grammar.

It's simple really. if a post is so full of mistakes that it either triggers your pedant alarm or is unreadable then don't read it. There are millions of other threads here to read, and if the poster needs genuine help, then your pedantry is not going to make them feel better is it?

If you cannot understand a post, or reading it makes your teeth itch, then just move along. OP isn't gagging for you in particular to understand and advise. Your having good SPAG doesn't make your opinion is any more informed or valuable.

If the item distressing you is another reader's comment, not even the OP, scroll on past rather than interrupt the thread. You wouldn't interrupt the flow of conversation at a business meeting for this, would you? OK, you might do so if you needed to score points or take someone down or show off your skills and cleverness. But office politics don't apply here.

I don't agree that standards of literacy have fallen.

I am fairly sure that if you could have set up MN in 1970, or 1950, standards of spelling would have been as bad, or worse (though they would have been different). My uncle (born in the 50s) has awful SPAG because people didn't really understand about dyslexia back then and so he was never taught the coping strategies people know about now. And my friend's sister, whose grammar is rotten, would not have been educated at all, because she has Down's Syndrome. I am very glad we live now, and not then.

Philslothy, I'm really sorry about what happened to you. The point about cultural capital is really important.

I wish people would stop assuming SPAG errors indicate generally low literacy or low levels of intelligence or education. It is not ok, IMO, to target people for those things anyway - if someone genuinely has low intelligence why is it ok to keep reminding them of it?

Sometimes an error changes the whole meaning of a post, or at least renders it ambiguous and it needs clarifying in order to get relevant responses. Sometimes a horrible and goady thread is started and people pull apart the errors in order to derail the troll. Sometimes an auto correct makes a hilarious mistake and there are a host of witty answers. Sometimes people won't get many replies because a lack of paragraphs means important information in their post gets lost and it would genuinely help them to space it out so that they get more helpful advice. On the other hand, sometimes people are belittled and sometimes people are discouraged from seeking help. Sometimes people just love to be superior and put someone else down.

Therefore I don't think there should be a blanket rule on posts correcting or questioning SPAG, I think it should continue as it is where people can report and individual posts are judged according to circumstance.

Text speak is a slightly different issue because that's not necessarily to do with dyslexia/weak literacy skills or similar but is a choice of expression. If text speak was prolific on here it would make the site quite different. Personally, I like the fact that it's not really used here and I think that this isn't the same as picking on 'have'/'of' etc.

Further upthread a poster said, "its never said nicely", for me this is the crux of the matter. I don't think there's anything wrong with correcting a spelling mistake but the people who do it usually do so with the intent to belittle and humiliate the poster.

I have experienced it, i used an apostrophe with an 'S' which i thought was the plural for a noun i was using, apparently it was incorrect. I always like to improve myself and open to learning new things, but the particular poster who pointed it out, is a very well known arrogant poster who seems to get a kick out of belittling people constantly on MN, said poster continued with this until she completely derailed the thread contributing nothing to the actual query.

If you addressed someone like that in real life people will be rightly horrified but hiding behind the anonymity of a computer, people let their egos get the better of them. This is what really needs to be reigned in.

Indeed jelly- "Your shit" and "You're shit" being a prime example!

I hardly ever use punctuation not sure why but I suspect it drives folk daft.

I don't agree that standards of literacy have fallen.

It's impossible to compare. Levels of literacy, in the sense of "not being illiterate" have risen massively, whatever the Tories try to argue.

The rise of social media and other formats however means that instead of only seeing the writing of university-educated professionals (newspapers, books, government pamphlets) we now see the writing of a whole swathe of society who, previously, would only have have written letters and postcards to their friends and filled out forms, the latter often with help. The bubz/hubz/lol people are evidence of rising literacy, or at least of rising useful literacy, because they are writing for a public audience, something their mothers would never have done.

Similarly, people who a generation ago would have been working in factories are now working in what were historic white collar occupations, where again they are expected to be able to write. Is their literacy as good as people in those jobs a generation ago? Perhaps not (and the free and easy 1970s/80s attitude to teaching grammar doesn't help). But there's a hell of a lot more of them, and the average level of literacy over that number of people is massively better.

So it looks like literacy is falling, because we see a wider range of literacy. But literacy overall is rising, because more and more people are using language effectively.

The idea in the 1970s that you didn't need to teach grammar because children acquire it anyway was a middle class fantasy, because it assumed the use of correct/standard/whatever English at home. It's now acting as a rather nasty inter-generational shibboleth, because people raised by educated parents in the 70s and 80s (ie, "us") have accurate English, while the main route to that knowledge, schools, denied it to many people who now feel diminished. In my darker moments I do wonder why NT adults who learnt to drive as adults can't learn grammar as adults on the same basis rather than blaming their schools, but it's actually much more complex than that and language acquisition as an adult is difficult.

But arguments that start from a position of "it was better in the past" are almost certainly wrong. You just saw a much smaller proportion of the produced language.

I think YABU. Not because it isn't rude and sneery to correct people's grammar in front of others - it is - but because I object to the idea that we're all such fragile ickle snowflakes that we need Mummy MN to police and censor even mild rudeness. And I'm sorry but correcting grammar is mild rudeness.

I think that's largely true.

It's not just about social change. It's not just more people working in literate jobs, it's different people - people aren't automatically barred from those jobs or from education by common disorders that would have kept them out in the past.

I think adults can learn grammar. If they can't, universities ought to shut up shop, for a start.

As pp have mentioned text speak is the probably the most irritating thing to read on MN closely followed by leaving off letters e.g., "an" instead of "and". I wouldn't report a thread because of it. Those that are able to spell correctly, should make the effort to do so, it would make threads so much easier to read.

I have witnessed some snobbery on some threads, it's unpleasant and uncomfortable to read and often the posters get pulled up on it but I've also witnessed inverse snobbery where the posters rarely get pulled up.

Anyway, OP I think the posts should be allowed to remain and people can judge for themselves.

There's a time and place to point out mistakes.

A post which says "My Mothers died and fallen on the cat witch also dyed and then granny came in and slipped over in the blood squeezed out the cat and died and the my deer husband ran in and tripped over the body heap and died", should not be followed with a lecture on spelling and grammar.

If someone has a genuine curiosity and wants to learn correct spelling and grammar, they will ask. Or they will read other posts and wonder why they use a different spelling (e.g rein rather than reign) and look it up.

As annoying as it is to me personally, it would be beyond rude to point it out on a thread. I value good manners as highly as I do correct spelling and grammar (although inevitably slips are made from time to time!)

What I hate, though, is the 'pack mentality'. The first couple of replies will mock the OP's SPAG, then umpteen others will gleefully copy, thinking themselves so clever and superior.

A recent thread had this, although it was because the OP took the time to include many details in a long post. The amount of replying posters who complained that it was too long to read astonished me (and I'm afraid I did bite on that one). It made me question their intelligence, tbh.

I honestly don't remember there being any focus at all on grammar when I was at school. Handwriting, spelling? Yes. Grammar? No.

YANBU - some people can't spell, are they to be banned from internet forums? it is effectively a ban if they can't get a response to the actual content of their post, just to their spelling.

TiggyD I had to chuckle at your post, it's taken me about 10 minutes to work out what was going on.

Some of the best and most helpful advice I had on here was from a lovely regular mnetter who couldn't spell or use punctuation. Very smart woman. I hate the idea some people have that mn is only for the 'educated middle classes'. Maybe it started that way but things change. Get over it!
Not sure about the deleting though. Depends how nasty the poster is.

Tiggy! your so funi hunz!

So it looks like literacy is falling, because we see a wider range of literacy. But literacy overall is rising, because more and more people are using language effectively.

Well, quite. It's hugely frustrating for people from accuracy/editing backgrounds but we should really rejoice.

I agree and disagree on this.
obviously there are people with dyslexia everywhere. There are people with special educational needs and people with traumatic school based back stories that render them incapable of knowing the difference between 'there', 'they're' and 'their".
However, the world is also currently populated with lazy buggers who can't be bothered to spell correctly or use proper grammar.
Tiggy is correct. Serious posts from people honestly requiring help don't need correcting.
People being judgy fuckers deserve everything they get.

There are many forms of intelligence.

It isnt midly rude its bloody offensive and arrogant and says more about you than them