Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Yes it's mind bottling how people could care less how they present themself. It is bothersome to you and I.
I like to find the grammatical errors in the writing of those who point out others' errors, especially when they mistakenly correct that which is not incorrect. They never seem to get what that action means.
In other words and numbers: If there are 10 people sitting at a table, and one of them makes a grammatical faux pas, and 4 of them feel a need to point this out, I will more than likely befriend the other 4.
Question: Can one be friends (i.e., treat as an equal) someone who doesn't understand the distinction between "your" and "you're" or spells threw as "through." I don't think I can. I have a "friend" who's prose is full of these errors and it's like so many wounds. This is not a stupid person, it's just someone who doesn't care (or notice?) about the language. And one wonders, what other glaring errors are integral to their mentality?
I'm also still a bit boggled by the OP's initial sentence and definition of a friend: "Treat as an equal"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by KaraZetterberg153
Maybe it's a class issue; we don't like to talk about class in the US, but it exists.
Yes, I think it's a class issue. That can be interpreted in more ways than one.
And let us not forget that people using the net, and a forum like this one, often use/utilize freewriting, or a variation of freewriting.
(I know I do.)
OP, I find myself more attracted to those who have a very good command of the English language. Why? It is because opposites attract.
Last edited by picklejuice; 03-20-2018 at 08:34 PM..
There is a lot of bad grammar online and yes, sometimes it’s cringeworthy. The folks who are mostly upset with it are in their 70’s and they can be very critical. Most people don’t seem to have much of a problem with it.
A millennial friend will text me using all kinds of sloppy grammar. So what, he’s smart as a whip, a super sales rep and we’ve been friends since he graduated college, basically. If people have other redeeming qualities besides grammar and I like them, then we’re friends, simple as that. I don’t overthink things like this and if a friend cared enough to tell me what I needed to know, even if it was poorly written and misspelled, I’d count myself fortunate to know them.
OP, I'm with you on wrong usage of 'your' when 'you're' should be used. It happens 12 billion times per day on the internet. So aggravating!
It's such a common mistake that it's apparent that people graduated from high school just using 'your' because they heard it phonetically and never caught on to the proper usage of when to use 'you're' and 'your'.
It's somewhat of a testament to how bad high school education can be in some subject areas.
Last edited by matisse12; 03-21-2018 at 12:05 AM..
I also do try to be patient in certain formats when I know people are typing on their phone, or other touchscreens that come with overzealously engineered autofill/autocorrect/predictive type features that will change a word you type to something else entirely. Yes, proofreading before sending is ideal, but it's also established through research that the writer is less likely to catch their own errors, particularly when they know that they typed correctly, and autocorrect simply doesn't have their same level of vocabulary.
Re: "Your/You're," "There/Their/They're," I know from editing that these are more commonly transposed by people typing quickly, because muscle memory plays a role, and their fingers literally get ahead of their actual cognition. It isn't always that they don't know which spelling is the appropriate one to use, it's often that they ended up essentially typing words on autopilot.
Essentially, there are various spelling situations where I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, especially in informal typed materials that I know didn't go through any rigorous proofreading process. Situations where the only explanation is complete ignorance of a given rule, usage, or construct is another issue. This is more often the case if it's a grammatical or punctuation issue than a spelling one. People really DON'T know any better. This is largely because of the way grammar and punctuation are taught (or, more accurately, not taught), and they're much bigger issues in people who are not voracious readers, and haven't logged countless hours reading and absorbing properly written and well-edited material for fun.
Yes, but in terms of friendship, isn't friendship based on equality and common interests? Can you really be friends with someone when those things are too divergent?
I think as long as you can understand each other, it's
fine. My struggle is in instances where there's a real
language-barrier, and neither of us are understanding
each other. It's like a radio station that doesn't come in
fully, and you can only grasp a word here or there. And
it drives you nuts, 'cause (sorry... BEcause ) it seems
like a great song that radio's playing.
It just leaves me wishing I had a big enough brain to run
out and learn five or six different languages so I can
communicate -- and understand -- better.
-
I've learnt enough English to understand what people say. I don't always understand what they actually mean. It is way easier to me to understand a metro person from any country than a villager speaking in my native tongue.
OP - I don't make spelling errors besides typos, but if I hear a clear logical speech from a person who can't write, I wouldn't care about his lack of written skills. No, it doesn't make sense to befriend people you think are some kind of low-life, maybe they think same about you. And, any writers' reference book will specifically say that we shouldn't start sentences with "and."
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
