Friday, July 01, 2005

on people who can't spell.

Hackers, Spelling, and Grammar?

and specifically comments such as this one.

personally I do think less of people who can't spell. I think it does in fact represent a lack of cognitive ability.

which is one of the reasons why in my #phreadom channel, we make a point to correct each other on spelling... some, like myself, yath, proc etc. are better at it than others... (like knix, shambuh etc) ;-)

one thing we obviously don't do much of is properly capitalizing the first letters of sentences. :-/ about the only time I make a point to do that is when I'm writing a paper or very important document or letter etc.

3 comments:

Françoise said...

hey phreadom, I personnally think it's really great to be corrected when I do make a mistake, because you never end perfecting your language skills, but as for thinking less of people, don't forget that you're on the net and for many people, like me, english is not my mother tongue, so my spelling obviously isn't as good as an american's would be, but that doesn't mean I'm a lesser person... ( I hope I'm making sense here)

JStressman said...

trust me, I realize that not all people have english as their first language. a lot of the regulars in my channel are not American.

I still correct them... but honestly, they generally spell better and type better than a lot of the Americans I know.

(and yes, you're making perfect sense)

honestly, sometimes I wonder if my grammar has been altered slightly subconsciously by spending so much time talking (typing) to foreign people? hrm.... who knows. :-)

Françoise said...

I totally understand, my boyfriend is german, and we speak french together ( my mother tongue), but after all these years his french is still a little bumpy, and sometimes I catch myself using weird expressions or pronunciations in french (germanisms? )
:)
being in contact with foreign people alters so much your perception of your own language!