This is quite recent but I’ve been browsing Lemmy a bunch lately and quite often I see extreme grammatical errors.
I’m not talking about like, incorrect stylistic choices between commas and dashes, or an improper use of ellipses or missing commas or incorrect use of apostrophes in its/it’s or in multiple posessive articles or just plain typos or any nitpicky grammar nazi shit like that, but just basic spelling specifically.
It’s one thing when you can’t spell some pretty uncommon words and you’re too lazy to look it up and/or use autocorrect, but it’s a completely different league to misspell very basic words, very recently I saw someone spell “extreme” as “extream” which is just kind of baffling, I actually can’t even imagine how one would make such a mistake?
And it’s not been an isolated thing either, I’ve seen several instances like that lately.
Am I going crazy? Is it just me?
I feel like it’s gotten better. I certainly don’t miss the days of “definately”. I feel like that one was everywhere. Its death is maybe the one good thing auto-correct did for the world.
Don’t forget the internet is global. People for whom English is a second language are much more common than they once were.
Could be people using a second language like others have mentioned. Another thing could be British vs US english. Webster changed how words were spelt in the early 20th centry to make them more phonetic for Americans, i.e. “colour” -> “color”
I blame these f’ing phone keyboards and autocorrect. I can’t see what I am touching, I can’t feel it, there’s no feedback, and I have to look up while I type. Whoever came up with approach deserves… A bad case of indigestion.
Mine has always been bad, but autocorrect seems to be bipolar as the years pass.
In my case, autocowreck is the main reason for incorrect spelling and grammar.
I would not be surprised if autocorrect was a major culprit along with phone keyboards. You can type something correctly and have autocorrect make it wrong. It’s also super easy to get the wrong letter if you have normal sized hands and are typing on a phone keyboard. I have turned autocorrect completely off and am significantly less error prone as a result.
I frequently decide against correcting an error if I think my intention is clear, and I am in a hurry. I don’t really care what strangers on the internet think of my editing skills.
I hate this. For instance, using u instead of you, autocorrect often turns it to I. It also will fucking “correct” your to you’re when you typed your on purpose. I’m ready to just turn it off. It fucks up my posts, texts, emails all the time. I don’t have this issue on my laptop.
I think you mean it will ducking correct…
I turned mine off completely because it has bo comprehension of when an apostrophe is appropriate in front of the letter s. Forever making words possessive that were intended to be plural. Apostrophes do not mean “look out, here comes an s.”
Thi’s i’s new’s to me. Can you give example’s of when its appropriate to use apostrophe’s?
Honestly I’m not doing much effort to be correct when writing English. As long as people get more or less my point I do not really care
Like those “isn’t it amazing” posts.
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Ableist
I can see where you are coming from. My BIL has learning difficulties and was borderline illiterate before smart phones enabled him to communicate in situations he otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. Unfortunately the “like” button still causes issues such as when he liked/shared a meme of a scantily clad black lady with the subtitle “When a n*gga dick hits just right” or something along those lines on facebook - his black cousin was quite offended by that.
That said, I agree with the other commenter that ableism is highly situationally dependent. Screen readers do not handle misspellings well like they mentioned. In my opinon it would be ableist if you were debating with someone or downvoted them due to an ad hominen dislike of their spelling as opposed to their sentiment.
Reductionist. There are valid concerns for why you’d want and expect proper spelling. Hell, you could even argue that not using proper spelling is ableist towards people who use screen readers or are ESL.
I swear to god working in an engineering field for the past 10 years or so has dramatically changed my grammar. Do you know who has the absolute worst grammar and spelling of anyone I’ve ever met? My boss. “First 2 channels shoul dBe woired for 0-10vDC” was a note he left on my desk yesterday. Do you know who’s the smartest person I’ve ever met when it comes to electrical? Also my boss.
It’s never a 1 to 1 comparison of intelligence fwiw. Everyone in this field spits out emails in half-cobbled together sentences and phrases and it just works somehow. When I type out multiple paragraphs and overexplain things, half the time they’ll just come down to the shop to talk instead.
But yeah I have realized that this will bleed out into the rest of my communication haha. I’ll look back at texts I send quickly to my fiance and see that I’m skipping words or saying shit wrong. Oh well, the ideas are communicated just as well most the time.
No you aren’t getting crazy. I stopped double checking my spelling after Trump became president the first time. Clearly most people don’t mind bad spelling so why bother?
I double check my writing because there are some “errors” that don’t matter (I stopped caring about “me” versus “I”) and then there are some errors that silently cause me to misinterpret the message
Like as an analogy if I ask how much milk is left in the carton in the fridge
- “haf” I know you mean half, no big deal
- “three” I know you didn’t read my question, frustrating but not the worst thing
- “full” but actually it was full three days ago when you last checked and this is stale information, and so I don’t buy another carton, then we’re out of milk because of a miscommunication
You know?
I’m burnt out man. I just dont have the energy or the careth to be accurate or even care about a small thing.
carrot*
spoiler
/s
No, he just doesn’t carrot all.
A majority have always been bad at spelling
A majorrity have always been bad at spelllng
Exactly
It’s not a recent thing, but I would say there has been a decline over the last decade or so. Not only does it seem like spelling and grammar are getting worse but I feel it is much more likely these days to find comments defending improper English rather than correcting it.
I saw someone spell “extreme” as “extream” which is just kind of baffling, I actually can’t even imagine how one would make such a mistake?
Maybe they had just come from dealing with large quantities of paper? Or enlarging a bunch of holes?
Anti-intellectualism has been on the rise for decades and spelling gets worse? I am shocked I tell you!
Also: inb4 the “language evolves!” crowd arrives.
Both are true.
Just imagine you having to fix a thousand pages of this. I feel your pain.
