Astahost's Professional Stance Is A Falling Dream Spelling and grammar is a dismal

[saxsux 0]

Yeah! That's the spirit!
We really ought to bring this to OpaQue's attention, he's not been on here recently. I think he's doing things with the paid side of Xisto.
He's been on the Xisto livehelp for quite a bit, we could drop him a line through there...
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[demolaynyc 0]

Hmm... I don't think grammar or spelling is that really important. I think simple mistakes should still be considered professional, however if there is a major lack of grammar and spelling, then they need to change it.

[iGuest 3]

Hi! Just dropped in from the Xisto for a minute, saw this topic and just wanted to say that i find the Xisto Forum to be of a rather good quality, in spite of all the spelling and grammar errors you have mentioned. Of course I spend a couple hours a day trying to read "Hey im g2g now. thx. im me asap.", so just about anything is an improvement. Keep up the good work.

[jake658879 0]

Thank you man, in like, all my posts I don't spell right. I end up shortening the words into "chat languages." I will spell everyone of my posts right, and I will try to use correct grammer whenever possible. Should I edit my previous posts to use correct spelling and grammer?

[harphe 0]

I think that most people don't really think about comma's and grammar when online on a forum. I've been on many forums and I still find people that still tYpE lyK diS and it's REALLY... and I mean REALLY annoying. I try my best to write in correct English grammar that I was raised to learn. Of course... I still stick in an occasional ^^ and -___-;; for kicks. XD

[evought 0]

I also agree with Twitch. I have been very annoyed of late by posts which I tried to decipher and, in the end, gave up on entirely.Another thing that people seem to forget about is that your posts are editable. I have good grammar and spelling but often have typos slip past me even after I preview. When I see them, I go back and edit them out. Many times I will compose long posts offline anyway and have more opportunities to catch mistakes.No one is perfect, as evidenced by several small typos in this set of posts. I have reviewed pre-publication manuscripts before where the manuscript is combed by a couple dozen reviewers and several editors--- and still small mistakes go all the way to press. On the other hand, the more you make an effort, the less it will impact your posts.Being professional in your posts has another potential side-effect: you can get the attention of potential employers. I have had potential employers or clients do a Google search and read through my posts. I have also been asked to write a book on the basis of forum posts a publication house's editor discovered online (fell through for contractual reasons, but anyway). So, be neat because you are in the public light if for no other reason.

[iGuest 3]

I honestly don't think grammar or commas matter. Even at the slightest. Some language arts teachers are really strict about this nowadays. Most of them believe that if all the commas aren't in the right place, it means that your paper isn't very good. They don't care about voice, humor, or how moving it is. If you just add some long, flowery words, or if you're spelling is good, they'll think it's a good paper. That annoys me.

 

It requries a combination of these things to make a good peice of writing.

 

I have to admit, my spelling is far from flawless; as is my use of punctuation. This is mainly due to the fact that I am not a native speaker, and that in my native tongue, Dutch/Flemish, the punctuation is used differently than in English. To add to it, in most English courses, punctuation is hardly ever covered. At one point I even asked my English teacher about the correct use of the comma and semi-colon and he bluntly answered me that it doesn't matter since the topic wasn't covered in the course.

 

If you ask me whether or not I agree with Twitch, my answer is simple. I agree wholeheartedly. I know how annoyed I can get when reading through a text where no punctuation is used, and I know how aggrivated I get when I am forced to read through the most atrocious spelling errors in my own native tongue.

 

Now, I will hush because I don't wish to be hurt by Twitch for butchering HIS native language in this post.

 

(Bear in mind, when I am very conscious of my spelling and grammar, I will most likely mess up more.)

 

You did fine mw.

 

Imagine a board-room presentation or a class teacher going on in a dull monotone for hours - without any pitch flunctuations or kinesthesis (body movements/gestures).

Isn't that how college lectures are anyways?

 

And I didn't mean it for people to learn English in order to make themselves understood.

Actually that is a good idea. English and Russian are the two best laguages for technical discussions. Most forums on coding and programing are in english. The ones that aren't are most likely in Russian. Being as I only speak english and can struggle through written spanish, I really have no room to talk.

 

You know what I find quite ironic? The fact that someone posting about ppor spelling and grammar, and who can't even spell the word "grammar" correctrly.

 

Apart from that, I must say I do agree with you. We've been seeing so many posts about Google or GMail, and "What's your favourite" kinda stuff. Standards have been slipping, not only in spelling and grammar, but also the general quality of posts. People have been posting stuff that is only just above being spam, but is actually a waste of time for anyone to read, but moderators and admins have allowed it.

I think we need some serious reform in standards here.

 

I'm not knocking the Xisto staff, or Xisto - they do a fantastic job, I've yet to find somewhere better than here - but it would help if the site were a bit more presentable. The forum is a bit of a mess at the moment, this skin isn't amazing, and quite a few features don't work very well. Quite a large amount of the site could do with updating. The packages page (http://forums.xisto.com/package.php) still refers to members having to get at least 50 posts for hosting (the old system, before hosting credits were introduced). Acording to the webhosting page (http://forums.xisto.com/index_webhosting.html) the servers haven't been updated since 2004. A lot of the site is out of date, or contradicts itself.

It's not just us that need to clamp down on spelling and grammar, the Xisto staff really ought to do something too.

 

And you were complaining about his spelling... Anyways no one is perfect. Eventually you will make a mistake. I enjoy reading a forum that I can understand what is being said in. I also like debating things, so if you see me make an outrageous statement, call me on it and we will debate it. Well let's see if this gets me some more credits.

[iGuest 3]

I think that the grammatical as well spelling mistakes creep in, not due to lack of knowledge, but may be, due to some sort of reluctance towards these issues.So far as my posts are concerned, whenever I am confused regarding a spelling, I check it with a word processor. That has really helped me a lot in improving my spelling. Saying so, I can't claim that I am cent percent accurate as yet.Regards,Sid

[Diranikah 0]

Well i noticed a change since the early 90's, where teachers would be so angry if you made a mistake.Nowdays it's fairly different, lazy teachers if they understand it they just say good work?!I myself failed everything i ever tried in school to do with english, but that never stopped me.My punctuation is Awful!, but as long as you guys understand what i mean than i guess i'm happy .But please tell me if it's getting annoying.

[evought 0]

Well i noticed a change since the early 90's, where teachers would be so angry if you made a mistake.Nowdays it's fairly different, lazy teachers if they understand it they just say good work?!

I myself failed everything i ever tried in school to do with english, but that never stopped me.
My punctuation is Awful!, but as long as you guys understand what i mean than i guess i'm happy .
But please tell me if it's getting annoying.

I don't put much stock in standard english classes. The easiest way to improve grammar and spelling is to read a lot. If you read the woks of good authors, you slowly absorb their language, idioms, and style. If you combine that with writing (like posting here), you should start getting better. Another good thing can be to actively have people critique your writing; I remember a college writing course where my papers fairly bled with red ink, but I got better. My spelling was always sub par, though, until I started playing competive Scrabble. It does not take losing many games to give you a real incentive to learn.

Good writing is not a matter of intellectual snobbery--- it just makes it easier to communicate what you mean. As an exercise, look at one of your sentences and try to make it mean something else; try to twist its meaning. Then try that with other people's sentences. Good writing can only be read one way (unless it intentionally puns). Most people's writing is hard to interpret and easy to misinterpret.

I have seen several studies lately where anywhere from %50 to %60 of email is misinterpreted by its readers. This is why you get a lot of serious flame wars online: people are just not understanding each other. Part of this is because you do not have tone of voice or facial expressions to interpret when reading an email. Part of it is because the writer of the email does not use punctuation and other cues to tell the reader what they really mean. One of the better ways to check your own writing is to read it aloud; mistakes and bad punctuation tend to jump out as you read.

Anyway, I'll get off of my soap box now.

[ruben1405241511 0]

So here we are, a good four months later... I still think the [spell]ing syntax should be introduced, so that there is a good way to note mistakes without aggrieving the others.

Was there any action taken from the organisational side or are we still at the same point with some people maybe changing their writing?

I have been gone for a while and now noticed that there are editbuttons now. Kinda nice, especially for typos, but doesn't help against real spelling mistakes.

 

A little off topic, but actually the reason why I actually clicked reply:

While I agree with you on the rest, evought, I am convinced that most flame wars and insults on the internet occur, because people dare much more. In real life we keep much more to our manners, but there are many people out there randomly starting flame wars with others in chat rooms. If you talk to your friends on an instant messenger, this stuff occurs a lot less often, on the one hand, because you know the other person and their "grade of roughness in language", but also because we have a lot of Chatspeak (emoticons, capitalisation, italics, boldness and so on.) to help us out with the missing gestures and facial expressions.

I honestly think that most flaming begins where someone doesn't stop teasing/insulting/whatever is upsetting because he knows that he doesn't have to await serious consequences. It's much easier to insult someone when there is no risk of him choking you =)

I'd like to see those studies though, got link?

[evought 0]

<snip>I'd like to see those studies though, got link?

Not the ones I was looking for, but this one goes into a bit of it. It talks more about lack of expression and tone more than style.

[seec77 0]

I honestly don't think grammar or commas matter. Even at the slightest. Some language arts teachers are really strict about this nowadays. Most of them believe that if all the commas aren't in the right place, it means that your paper isn't very good. They don't care about voice, humor, or how moving it is. If you just add some long, flowery words, or if you're spelling is good, they'll think it's a good paper. That annoys me.

 

I would just like to make a small analogy here. What you're saying is like saying, "You don't have to write correct XHTML code, 'cause browsers will overtime accomodate to your silly hacks!". This saying is what led to an estimated huge profit loss for web developers and internet sites all over the world. Just think about that. Back then, people were like, "Oh don't worry! It'll work on Netscape!" or whatever, and that's exactly what happened, it ended up working only on Netscape or whatever other browser because of the program's quips of uncomformance, that used to be called bugs but stuck on for backward-compatability.

 

And if you think that this won't matter for languages, just think of future advancements in the fields of AI and language recognition, when in the future we'll have several dialects of English, based on which IRC channel we hang around on, and speech recognition could be delayed because people like you don't want to write/speak/use valid English!!!

 

Wow, that was really just an exaggeration.

[ruben1405241511 0]

@evought: That's interesting. From personal empiricism, I would never think so, but that might be because most of my friends know that I always use sarcasm. Plus I don't talk that much to strangers on the net. I found a bit poor that they didn't consider netspeak (smilies etc.) at all, because that's the way people convey emotions in emails.Hell, if I got a cent for every ^ I made in a conversation I would be stinking rich and if there was a key for ^^ (two in one), then my keyboard would probably 20% less used.@seec77: That was not an exaggeration at all, just surf some IRC channels and compare their way of speaking... Or read a bit on urbandictionary.com.. Or read stuff from communities in Australia and compare with those from America. What's exaggerated or even *BLEEP*: The analogy.. In human brains you don't have to worry about backwards compatibility that much, of course, it might be hard for future English readers to understand what we meant with "Jump off" or so, but the constant development of human language is what it makes it SO much more rich than XHTML, which is just mark up language coming in different versions, made up by a central institution. What would you say, if they suddenly placed an institution in your country that told you "'a-whole-nother' is not a real word, please use something else.". Well, ok already the case in France ^^ but still, you will be understood by your fellow humans. You can't compare that to computers. Not yet at least.

[Chesso 0]

I haven't really read alot of the posts in this thread but you have to remember there are people of all ages here so not everyone can use perfect spelling and grammar.There is also no absolute definite rule on using commas and such, it's more of a guideline much like indenting with programming, it's really up to the programmer (or writer in this case) where they decide to use it.Don't forget there is also the use of ; which is well, let's say a full stop is 100% breather, a comma is a 50% breather and ; would be a 25% breather or atleast that's how I see it.The whole short speaking of everything in online chat certainly doesn't help as the thread started said, I tend to avoid using shorter versions of words and such anywhere anymore.