Spelling - does it matter on The Forum?

[Stuart M]

Hey, if bad spelling winds up Andy McGeggor, I'm going to tri it.

Is their a campign website I can sine up at?

[Andy McGregor]

Is their a campign website I can sine up at?

Now you're going off at a tangent

[DianaS]

i know someone who always puts typos into his texts when posting publically. used to amuse me he's a profe3ssor of education and I thought he must type and drink...
turned out he didn't want to alientate students and make them scared of posting so he deliberabley set the standard low so that people caopuld talk communicate and not get hung up on whether or not they can spell.

So i reckon do you want an inclusive forum or one where only people of a certain calibre can post. People who are so up their own arses in any case that they would just bore the pants off every one esle

[Dreadful Scathe]

Is there anyone on here 'up their own arse' ?

[pjay]

Is there anyone on here 'up their own arse' ?

oh oh, pick me..... no hang on, that's not what I meant....

[doc martin]

To be fair, I don't find your posts particularly bad on the spelling front these days - I think you've improved a lot since a couple of years ago. Your reputation for innovative speeling stems mainly from that time, I think.

As a relative newcomer here I would like to say that I didn't realise that you had a reputation for bad spelling... just for long posts .

{BTW the 'no' options above assume that meaning is not lost by inappropriate use of spelling, grammar, punctuation or smlilies. It's a multiple tic - but please don't tick both the yes and no options for the same thing.}

IMHO (sorry Heather ) this is the key point. In a short post it won't interfere much with the communication if there are a few typos. However, I disagree with this:

My view is that if you are intelligent enough to recognise a spelling error, then you know the word that was intended.

If you are building a long, reasoned argument then anything which causes the reader to stop thinking about the line of reasoning will impair the communication, and trying to figure out a badly misspelled word can do this.

The research quoted by pjay is very interesting and was recently exploited by an advert on the railways. One side consequence of this is that we are very bad at proof reading our own writing. Hence the need for spell checkers.

I'm not too sure about the disrespect angle of things. To me it seems more that if you put a lot of effort into writing a long, well thought out post, you want to maximise the effect that post has. And that means making it as readable as possible. So proof reading the flow and grammar yourself and then spell checking the whole post is more a matter of using your own time well than consideration of your reader's feelings. [Note the appeal to naked self interest rather than altruism. Often more successful I find]

To my mind, the small amount of effort taken to cut and paste the whole post into Word is well worth it, both to improve the impact of the post and to keep the pedants off of my back.

[ducasi]

So i reckon do you want an inclusive forum or one where only people of a certain calibre can post. People who are so up their own arses in any case that they would just bore the pants off every one esle

(And to the typo to!)

[doc martin]

Now you're going off at a tangent

So what's your angle on this?

[David Franklin]

To my mind, the small amount of effort taken to cut and paste the whole post into Word is well worth it, both to improve the impact of the post and to keep the pedants off of my back.

Even easier: the latest Google toolbar has an integrated spell checker.

[Andy McGregor]

Is there anyone on here 'up their own arse' ?

I'm trying it now, it's not as easy as you'd think

I do not believe that Gadget is spelling badly because of lack of ability. He's spelling badly because he doesn't think it matters. It's obvious that some people are bad spellers due to a number of factors like education or dyslexia and I have no problem with them at all. But Gadget doesn't fall into those categories and his spelling is so dismal it makes his posts frustrating to read. This means that many of his posts go unread or only partially read.

I'm still trying that "up my own arse" thing". But it's proving a bit painful getting the laptop to follow me up

[Andy McGregor]

So what's your angle on this?

The right angle.

[LMC]

An obtuse one, surely?

[ducasi]

I do not believe that Gadget is spelling badly because of lack of ability. He's spelling badly because he doesn't think it matters. It's obvious that some people are bad spellers due to a number of factors like education or dyslexia and I have no problem with them at all. But Gadget doesn't fall into those categories ...

How do you know this? (I have no idea why his spelling is bad.)

[David Franklin]

An obtuse one, surely?

'Cos it only takes a secant to work out it was a negative tangent...

[Andy McGregor]

How do you know this? (I have no idea why his spelling is bad.)

Gadget has said so. And he can spell when he puts his mind to it. I thought I'd said that

[David Bailey]

i know someone who always puts typos into his texts when posting publically. used to amuse me he's a profe3ssor of education and I thought he must type and drink...
turned out he didn't want to alientate students and make them scared of posting so he deliberabley set the standard low so that people caopuld talk communicate and not get hung up on whether or not they can spell.

That's an... interesting... point of view. OK, let's be blunt (everyone else is), it's dumb.

Surely he'd be better off setting an example of good practice, trying to raise the standards, rather than trying to handicap himself? And surely we should all be aiming to improve ourselves rather than lower ourselves?

It sounds like he's heard of "writing for your audience" without actually understanding it.

If brilliant dancers come to a venue, should they deliberately make dancing mistakes? Or should they dance as well as they can, whilst targetting their dancing to match the style and ability of their partners?

So i reckon do you want an inclusive forum or one where only people of a certain calibre can post. People who are so up their own arses in any case that they would just bore the pants off every one esle

Can I pick option 3 please?

I want a forum where people improve, and where inclusiveness means we can criticize and debate without rancour.

Oh, and I want world peace as well. And a pony to go with Ducasi's.

[LMC]

I want a forum where people improve, and where inclusiveness means we can criticize and debate without rancour.

And take the p*** out of each other occasionally (especially DJ).

I'll have a pony as well please. And a plastic rocket.

[pjay]

That's an... interesting... point of view. OK, let's be blunt (everyone else is), it's dumb.

Surely he'd be better off setting an example of good practice, trying to raise the standards, rather than trying to handicap himself? And surely we should all be aiming to improve ourselves rather than lower ourselves?

It sounds like he's heard of "writing for your audience" without actually understanding it.

I think whether or not it's dumb depends on what he is trying to achieve - if he actually believes that people are not posting because they are worried about their ability to spell then it would make perfect sense to create a culture in which posting on that forum is demonstrated in such a fashion where the ability to do a good job of written language isn't important. It sounds to me like this is what he was trying to achieve... so the interesting thing in my mind is did he or did he not achieve his goal?

In terms of the dancer example... when a particularly talented lead, with much competition experience, who is capable of the most difficult of moves is dancing with a fairly new follow should he dance with her exactly the same as he would with his competition partner? I don't personally think so I would think that it would be reasonable for him to dance with her at around about her own level, and make sure to let her know that he's enjoying that dance too.

I know I'm particularly bad at it, but I really do prefer the approach where we watch first for the good things and encourage people in these things, rather than watching first for the bad things and kicking people when we see them.

[David Franklin]

Surely he'd be better off setting an example of good practice, trying to raise the standards, rather than trying to handicap himself? And surely we should all be aiming to improve ourselves rather than lower ourselves?

Coincidentally, I know a professor (married to her, actually!), who spends about half her marking time puzzling over the grammatical and spelling mistakes her students have made in order to work out what they were trying to say before she even gets to worrying about the actual content. And these are post-graduate students!

It sounds like he's heard of "writing for your audience" without actually understanding it.

Possibly harsh. I could see him having a valid argument if, for example, he was posting on a forum for people suffering from dyslexia. But I would ASSuME that as a professor of education his students are future educators, in which case !

[Andy McGregor]

i know someone who always puts typos into his texts when posting publically. used to amuse me he's a profe3ssor of education and I thought he must type and drink...
turned out he didn't want to alientate students and make them scared of posting so he deliberabley set the standard low so that people caopuld talk communicate and not get hung up on whether or not they can spell.

So i reckon do you want an inclusive forum or one where only people of a certain calibre can post. People who are so up their own arses in any case that they would just bore the pants off every one esle

Setting aside for a moment that this may or may not be the right thing to do from an educational viewpoint, it's patently silly. If somebody is a bad speller they are as unlikely to recognise bad spelling as they are correct spelling. So, as far as the student with bad spelling is concerned it is likely to be assumed that the Professor will have correct spelling because he's a professor. Unless he points out that his spelling is deliberately incorrect and then students will be confused.

It's an nice theory but it doesn't really stand up. I believe the professor probably was a bad speller and had found a convenient excuse as a cover up.