Speeling & Grammer

[dapence]

I thought I'd offer a suggestion as well, and bring up a subject long in need of addressing -- Spelling and Grammar.

Now, I understand that the degree of control of the English Language varies among TTF members. That's due to age, education, and the fact that English is a second or third language for some members.

That being said, I'd like to suggest members could use a program like TEXTPAD (http://www.textpad.com/), or BBEDIT for Mac users (http://www.barebones.com/) to better compose their posts. I think you'll find the added workspace, as well as other tools available with these programs (such as spell checkers), will greatly improve the quality of their posts.

This is just a suggestion, no new rules are to be inferred from this post.

[Idril]

hehe - you beat me to it - I was about to ask about the possibility of a spell check, within the forum itself - I know my spelling sometimes goes to pot as my brain is running faster than my fingers:)

[Lantarion]

Does this mean I don't need to be a nitpick anymore?? :eek:
But typos (if they're not too crazy) are often quite nice.. I actually like seeing words like "ocacsionally' and "pargmatic".. :D
But hooray for the spell check!

[Elbereth]

Here is a suggestion coming from someone who has been guilty of misspelling and/or poor grammer.

After you have submitted your post, re-read what you just posted. If you see any errors, click on the edit button and edit your mistakes. It is as easy as that my friends. ;)

[Wolfshead]

I'd like to see people who don't make an effort at spelling and grammar shot - Ok, so a slight exaggeration, but you get my point. Although, I can see there isn't really much chance of anything like that being inforced (not the shooting bit) - chatspeak is too widely used, and even some of the most intelligent kids use it now subconciously. It can't be eliminated, so nothing can be done there.

Anyway, I think an inbuilt spelling checker would be a good idea - you could get it check if you wanted it to. There's always the odd word even the best of us can't remember how to spell :)

And what a great idea, Elbereth! I use it already... but I have infact just put it to use for this post, what an uncanny coincidence :rolleyes:

[Thorin]

You know what? I can handle some of the errors in spelling. Its when it is combined with the teeny-bopper language, poor use of puncuation and capitals, disjointed sentence phrasing, tossed in with computer speak that drives me nuts. No offense to the teenagers on this forum, but as a teacher getting students to speak the English they've been learning in school is difficult. When I'm reading some posts, I feel like I'm reading assignments in school of someone with severe ADHD who is excited about something. It is quite painful:

4 sure ITS LIKE THAT. #$%^&& why can't people just B better posters!? (i try but sometims fial ocasinly.....WHAAT?? U Rnt liking my posts?????? LOL welll....WHO R U??

Does that look familiar to some? Let me tell you. It isn't our foreign/ESL posters who are doing that. It is the English speaking natives born and raised in our English school systems....How's that for an endorsement? :D

[Aulë]

Thorin, I seriously hope that you don't think that all the school-aged people on this forum type like that.:rolleyes:
The majority of the members on TTF can type and spell perfectly, but it seems that the Legolas-lovers are the ones who have no skills in that department (eg, no capitals, terrible grammer, incorrect spelling, etc). Take my word, so many times in a RPG, a Legolas-lover will turn up, and completely ruin the quality of the thread (Not just RPGs either.).

Maybe they'll disappear after The Return Of The King?:)

[Beorn]

Originally posted by Thorin
4 sure ITS LIKE THAT. #$%^&& why can't people just B better posters!? (i try but sometims fial ocasinly.....WHAAT?? U Rnt liking my posts?????? LOL welll....WHO R U??

That sounds eerily familiar :eek:

You're definitely right Thorin. Most of the non-native English speakers have perfect English. A lot of the native ones are just too lazy to use it. :(

[Lantarion]

Originally posted by Aulë
(eg, no capitals, terrible grammer, incorrect spelling, etc).
Lmao!! :D :D
I'm very sorry, I just had to throw that in your face. ;)

Yes it's very nice to see that although there are member sof very diverse nationalities at TTF, there seems to be practically no language barrier at all.. Tolkien's language might sometimes be a little old-fashioned, or he might use words that are not generally used anymore, or used in a different context (like "faggot"); so perhaps the LotR (and especially the Silmarillion) actually raises most readers' vocabularies, or even grammar.

[Aulë]

Originally posted by Lantarion
Lmao!! :D :D
I'm very sorry, I just had to throw that in your face. ;)

Yes it's very nice to see that although there are member sof very diverse nationalities at TTF, there seems to be practically no language barrier at all.. Tolkien's language might sometimes be a little old-fashioned, or he might use words that are not generally used anymore, or used in a different context (like "faggot"); so perhaps the LotR (and especially the Silmarillion) actually raises most readers' vocabularies, or even grammar.

If you're going to be combing over my posts and picking out spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, at least try and not do them yourself. ;)

And it disappoints me that I can't state the male version of a chicken on this forum without being censored...:p

[Lantarion]

Ooh, it's like that is it?! This means war!! :D
;) Kidding, of course. Or am I?
I left the "sof" in there on purpose; I always use two dots in the stead of three; and why is that comma wrong? :)

And it disappoints me that I can't state the male version of a chicken on this forum without being censored...:p
And we can't say we're happy in old-fashioned English! :eek:

[Aulë]

Originally posted by Lantarion
Ooh, it's like that is it?! This means war!! :D
;) Kidding, of course. Or am I?
I left the "sof" in there on purpose; I always use two dots in the stead of three; and why is that comma wrong? :)


And we can't say we're happy in old-fashioned English! :eek:

LOL,
Well, the comma should be a semi-colon.
And I don't speak English: I speak Australian- "The Language of the Gods"! ;)

[munchkin]

Yes, I cnt stnd peple who tpe lke ths! We need a spell checker for this site. I usually do what Elbereth said, I read over my post and then if I forgot something or it looks horrible, I edit it. It takes more time but it makes it better quality. Thats what I suggest everyone else do who cnt spel!;)

[Elendil3119]

Sometimes its hard to reread a post before you post it, because of all the bold/italic tags etc. What I do is I preview my posts before I post them, and it helps a lot. :)

[Idril]

I didn't know cockerel and rooster were banned words? Opps.... I've used them:(

Some members make absolutely no effort composing their posts and that includes the spelling, punctuation and grammar aspects.
Penality points for repeat offenders! I'm not referring to the minor typo or thoses words you know are wrong and can't for the life of you think, what the correct spelling is. I remember in my O'Level English Language paper, I forgot how to spell 'any' :confused: and it didn't work phonetically either - I spent valuable minutes on it, so I put something down and carried on. Luckily I got an A+.

[Niniel]

I hate typos and grammar errors in any language, even though English is a second language for me. I speak it well enough not to need a spelling checker, but I always reread my posts to see if a made any errors (I do because I can't type that well). And if I see any errors I usually edit my posts. So if everybody does that, we would haeve a lot less errors. But of course a spelling checker would be useful for people who know even less English than me.

[Aulë]

Originally posted by Idril
I didn't know cockerel and rooster were banned words? Opps.... I've used them:(

That's strange....
Usually the first four letters in 'cockeral' would be censored with four stars.
Well I'm glad that whatever did that was fixed. :)

[Inderjit S]

I would like a crackdown on 'Text Message' (r u kewl, etc) users in TTF. As one mod pointed out to me earlier on MSN, their are too many of those to deal with, but the Barrow-Downs, which had a considerably large number of these dealt with them firmly much to the improvement of the forum. Of course things like LOL and IMO, when used with some amount of standard English are acceptable ,but pure 'text message' is a big no-no. People may also respect the posters posts more if they use a 'Standard English' as opposed to text.

[FoolOfATook]

People may also respect the posters posts more if they use a 'Standard English' as opposed to text.

And there, I think, is the rub. I know that I tend to pay much less attention to the idea in posts that are full of poorly spelled words, or posts that lack basic attempts at punctuation. In my opinion, that's all that is needed.

[Arvedui]

Well, being someone with English as my second language, I welcome the possibility of running a spell-check on my posts. It would save me considerable time, since I frequently have to edit post several times.
That may of course also have somthing to do with my inability to master 'touch'...:rolleyes:

[Nenya Evenstar]

Did anyone notice the title of this thread? :p

(Was it purposeful?)

[Lantarion]

I'm not sure now, but I think it's called a "joke", or something like that..
:rolleyes:
;)

[dapence]

I think I was trying to make a point.

[Lantarion]

Yes, that too. :)

[Ol'gaffer]

It always bugs me that people can't take the time to spell correctly or even go through their posts to see if there are any major mistakes. It's ok that a person has now and then some small mistakes with names, especially since there are quite hard ones here in TTF (krhm Lantarion...:p)

But mistakes and abbreviations can really spoil a good conversation. Posts like:

hEy, ur her 2, whuts up?

can really annoy the heck out of people.

[Thomas Baggins]

I too would have to say that the use of such deplorable spelling as sometimes seen evident in TTF, does truly annoy me. *make's sure there's no errors in any of his recent posts.* I am not making fun, this is a real problem, I think some kind of TTF spell-checker should be in order and ordered to be used!

~Aravorn

[Estrella]

Someone in my creative writing class wrote a funny poem about chat-roomese, it may be in my magazine. i might post it. But I could never really get used the broken english. I could barely understand some of it. But we all have our faults, like capitalization and i can't spell Spaghetti to save my life. I was on another thread that complained about irrelevent posts, and someone suggested sending a list of " Forum Ettiquettes" to new members. If they do that , then maybe we should include a little detail about spelling and grammer. I always check my posts, and even if something sounds a little akward, I change it, and find many errors. Maybe on the spell check, we could also automatically capitalize Is..... it's annoying, since word does it automatically for you.

And Thorin, this is coming from an american teenager, there is still hope out there for proper English. :p

Cheers,

Estrella

[Wonko The Sane]

Here's my problem with editing a post in word, or wordpad or textpad, etc.:

People are too lazy to do it. They just don't care THAT MUCH.

If a spell check was incorporated into the post options (such as ther "preview reply" option) I think we'd see a marked improvement in spelling.

But to actually write a post in another program is tough.

The people who tend to do it are in RPs where the posts take more thought and it's not a quick sort of response like most threads here on TTF would get.

I'm sorry to say that suggesting certain outside programs won't be nearly enough to solve the problem.

The same people who are too lazy to change the word "opinoin" to "opinion" aren't going to go the extra mile and edit their posts in another window.

[Estrella]

I never suggested another program... i was just saying that since i'm too used to word automatically capitalizing Is, yes i'm lazy, it's kinda a pain since the website doesn't do it. If we were to incorporate a spell check into the website, maybe it could also capitalize Is. But maybe that's just the spoiled person's ideal..

[FoolOfATook]

My favorite teacher in the world, Dr. Hester, is always complaining about how computers are changing the way people write. Come on- you're really too lazy to capitalize "I"? Not to bust on you personally, but....


I think the idea that the forum should have to institute a spell check, rather than people simply learning to spell, is ridiculous.

Buy a dictionary.

[Nenya Evenstar]

And if you do want to spell check . . . what's so hard with typing your post in the TTF browser and pasting it into a word processor before posting? That way you get a spell check AND get to type your post on TTF. ;)

[Wonko The Sane]

I agree, it's NOT that difficult.
And if I had my way everyone would have a dictionary by their bed like I do.

UNFORTUNATELY, most people are lazy. We can hope they buy dictionaries and take the effort to capitalize their I's but they WON'T.

So rather than suffer by waiting for everyone to change and having to read misspelled posts let's just grit our teeth, and see if we can help the problem.

If we just ask them to change, they won't.
They're not going to change.
Might as well stop our own frustration and just institute a spell check.

(And yes, Llita, it would probably capitalize I's.)

[EllethBronwe]

I think that a spell check is a good idea, but lets not be too "in your face" about other people's mistakes. Some people (myself included) have bad grammar. So let's do this in a nice sort of way. Some members are probably English teachers, but give the rest of us a break. And I don't think that it is people's laziness that is the problem. it's that people come here to have fun not to write English compositions.

[Estrella]

Wonko.... that's a bit extreme. Though I can't say much since I have a very good 6 inched unabriged english dictionary on my night stand, but I only look at it bout every 10 weeks or so. I agree with Ellethbronwe, this isin't a compostion, but atleast make an effort to make sense. And if you have bad grammer, atleast try to learn good grammer. Don't worry, Took, I'm lazy, I admit it. Blame computers. I posted a poem on the writer's guild thread. It's in the prancing pony. If you want me to, I can post it on here too. It's funny. it's about Chat Room talk and english in general. Your right , wonko, best way to go is a spell check on the website. But proper english ain't everythang! ;)
Just please Capitalize Is automatically!

[Chymaera]

Along with my Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, My three copies of the Silmarillion, and 60% of the Histories of Middle-earth. I have two Dictionaries and a Thesaurus. They are all within arms lenght of my computer. They never go down, no upgrades needed, no compatibility problems, and no batteries required:D.

This does not help my grammar or punctuation or my typing, but most of my faults have been forgiven so far.;)
These problems will improve with time.

Lets keep the chatspeak in the Chatroom:)

[Theoden]

Originally posted by Chymaera
Lets keep the chatspeak in the Chatroom

Agreed... it does seem to degrade the quality of the thread when someone posts with lame abbreviations and intentionally mis-spelled words and lower case I's and the such. The accidental spelling is sad but forgivable and could be eradicated if we had an optional spell-check for forum users. I know I like to check my work before I post it... we all make mistakes :) It is the willingness to change them and respect others that makes the real difference.

-me

ps
I aslo keep a dictionary handy... :)

[Estrella]

Yes... i hate Chatspeak, even in the chatrooms, I can't speak it. Though I do slip into shorthand every now and then. But I do keep a spanish dictionary handy... And i've automatically trained myself to put three periods infront for the lingering effect. I mostly keep my old poetry books ( thier copyrighted 1947) handy, when i want to be inspired. My LotR book is kept more in the back of my bookshelf, but I keep my orginial 1965 copy safe away from things that could bend it. Ike, i keep finding errors in my last post!

[Dr. Ransom]

UNFORTUNATELY, most people are lazy. We can hope they buy dictionarys and take the effort to capitalize their I's but they WON'T.

Wonko: "Dictionarys" is correctly spelled D..i..c..t..i..o..n..a..r..i..e..s. :D :D :D

[Wonko The Sane]

Yes. Thank you. I know that. :) Typing fast has it's problems too.
:) See...even the best spellers make mistakes!! Let's get a spellcheck to save us the grief!