(ab) use of the English languwidge
Jan. 20th, 2004 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueWell, following on from my previous post about txt spk (here), and lack of language:
Has anyone noticed that online communities are more and more starting to end sentences with ellipsis? Yes, those perfidious little "..."s. I confess, I do it more than I should, but they're still bad things to end a sentence with. As is a preposition for that matter (sorry, I'm being a smart arse).
Another that I've noticed, certainly amongst the circle of people I know in coventry, is an irritating tendancy to suffix words with -age. Pubbage, jobbage, liftage. Argh!
Anyhow, I digress.
My personal opinion is that I _loath_ truncated English. Especially in the txt spk form that I get on my mobile. I'm firmly of the opinion that if you can't be arsed to write coherently, I cannot be bothered to read it.
I certainly note the link between well worded arguments, and my likelyhood of agreeing with them.
I understand that some have medical reasons why they can't spell, or write properly. I'm firmly prejudiced though. If it looks sloppily written, then in my overwhelming arrogance I usually disregard it.
I'll let you get away with the odd mispelling, because it's easy enough to miss a word when typing quickly. I don't typically bother spell checking things, especially on LJ - I get far too many false positives.
Words cannot express my profound dislike for 'l33t'. I'm sure it's one of those phases that people go through, because it's "k3wl". Personally, I feel it's even more childish and sloppy than bad punctuation.
Now I want to be clear here. I don't require _perfect_ English. I don't mind if you never use a semi-colon; I do this rarely myself. I also don't mind _too_ much if you skip commas, especially if your sentences are not ambiguous without.
A full stop and a paragraph is to my mind essential, for correct and easy interpretation of what you've just written.
And I get rather riled when common punctuation marks (namely, the apostrophe) gets misused.
An apostrophe denotes missing letters, perhaps where two words have been merged. Or, to indicate a posessive.
'till = Until
Your = belonging to you
You're = You are
Don't = Do not.
cars = plural of car
car's = belonging to the car
James = Proper noun.
James' = belonging to James
their = belonging to them
there = a location
they're = they are
"It's" and "Its" I'll forgive, since that's (that is) a violation of the posessive rules.
For reference though:
It's = It is
Its = belonging to it.
I'll let you off when using a time critical medium, such as online gaming. IRC I won't, because if you're trying to say something verbose, taking a little longer to write it makes it easier for the multiple people to read it. If you're saying something short, there's really no excuse - the time saved by 3 characters shortened out of a word is so very trivial.
Use of "-"s, "_" to indicate emphasis and 'common' abbreviations like LOL are a little fuzzier. The distinction I draw is if they _add_ to the written text, then they're usually OK. In a worst case, you could just ignore those "_"s (or mentally replace them with a bold, and italic or similar)
Aren't I an arrogant tosser?
Edit: Removed dodgy example
Has anyone noticed that online communities are more and more starting to end sentences with ellipsis? Yes, those perfidious little "..."s. I confess, I do it more than I should, but they're still bad things to end a sentence with. As is a preposition for that matter (sorry, I'm being a smart arse).
Another that I've noticed, certainly amongst the circle of people I know in coventry, is an irritating tendancy to suffix words with -age. Pubbage, jobbage, liftage. Argh!
Anyhow, I digress.
My personal opinion is that I _loath_ truncated English. Especially in the txt spk form that I get on my mobile. I'm firmly of the opinion that if you can't be arsed to write coherently, I cannot be bothered to read it.
I certainly note the link between well worded arguments, and my likelyhood of agreeing with them.
I understand that some have medical reasons why they can't spell, or write properly. I'm firmly prejudiced though. If it looks sloppily written, then in my overwhelming arrogance I usually disregard it.
I'll let you get away with the odd mispelling, because it's easy enough to miss a word when typing quickly. I don't typically bother spell checking things, especially on LJ - I get far too many false positives.
Words cannot express my profound dislike for 'l33t'. I'm sure it's one of those phases that people go through, because it's "k3wl". Personally, I feel it's even more childish and sloppy than bad punctuation.
Now I want to be clear here. I don't require _perfect_ English. I don't mind if you never use a semi-colon; I do this rarely myself. I also don't mind _too_ much if you skip commas, especially if your sentences are not ambiguous without.
A full stop and a paragraph is to my mind essential, for correct and easy interpretation of what you've just written.
And I get rather riled when common punctuation marks (namely, the apostrophe) gets misused.
An apostrophe denotes missing letters, perhaps where two words have been merged. Or, to indicate a posessive.
'till = Until
Your = belonging to you
You're = You are
Don't = Do not.
cars = plural of car
car's = belonging to the car
James = Proper noun.
James' = belonging to James
their = belonging to them
there = a location
they're = they are
"It's" and "Its" I'll forgive, since that's (that is) a violation of the posessive rules.
For reference though:
It's = It is
Its = belonging to it.
I'll let you off when using a time critical medium, such as online gaming. IRC I won't, because if you're trying to say something verbose, taking a little longer to write it makes it easier for the multiple people to read it. If you're saying something short, there's really no excuse - the time saved by 3 characters shortened out of a word is so very trivial.
Use of "-"s, "_" to indicate emphasis and 'common' abbreviations like LOL are a little fuzzier. The distinction I draw is if they _add_ to the written text, then they're usually OK. In a worst case, you could just ignore those "_"s (or mentally replace them with a bold, and italic or similar)
Aren't I an arrogant tosser?
Edit: Removed dodgy example
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 08:48 am (UTC)James' and James's can both mean belonging to James.
You pick the one that looks best in context.
I find misuse of Its and It's extremely irritating - not sure why, it just grates.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 12:25 pm (UTC)Oh well. World's not a perfect place. I figure I'll try and make it a little better (in my opinion of course) and that'll be well enough.