Originally posted by M5Power
I'm going to inject my own, original, never before discussed opinion:
If someone has trouble with English, fine, I can live. If you're purposely trying to either look "cool" with your Internet speak or are too lazy to use the shift key as well as periods and commas, then you have some issues. What these kids don't realize is how incredibly difficult and time consuming it is to try and decipher those posts. I have to re-read them about 4 or 5 times before I can even vaguely make out what the poster is trying to say, and I don't like that. If you make the kinds of mistakes that would normally be captured by Microsoft Word's Autocorrect, then fine, but if you make totally incomprehensible sentences that looks like a string of programming code, well, you're an idiot.
Just my viewpoint.
Hear! Hear! Spoken like somebody who knows how to read.
Different people expect different things. Some people expect to read sentences that express complete thoughts, and they use them, too. Sadly, others expect to recognize some code that tells them there are cool people afoot.
The English language is more than adequate to express just about anything you could imagine. The notion that it has somehow been improved by omitting punctuation (which is actually there for a reason), capitalization (also there for a reason), and any sense of coherency whatsoever is irritating. And being irritated is not the same as being angry, contrary to what Giancarlo's half-baked analysis would have you believe.
Of course if English is your second language or you can't type well, this is another issue altogether, and people can tell the difference.
I have actually learned a few things by taking note of various criticizms here. I no longer mix up loose and lose, for example. I know there's at least one more but I can't remember it right now. Now I could've whined like an incomprehensible baby and used a barrage of smileys(
, etc) at whoever pointed this out to me, but instead I'm glad to have learned something. So if you get corrected try being grateful and improve your communication skills. This will only benefit you.
And lastly, as far as Giancarlo's use of my "dense" quote... I was not referring to anyone's writing, but rather the inability to comprehend satire, which is what Doug's "relationship problem" thread is. In fact, the ability to pick up on satire (and sarcasm), which is subtle and requires a certain cerebral acumen, is a very reliable guage of intelligence or lack thereof. I stick by my statement: "I am truly astounded at how dense you people are." Although maybe I could expand it to include "entertained".
I think they don't capitalise their "i"s England either.
