Support NeoGAF

[Grinchy]

This isn't as snarky as it sounds. I'm genuinely curious about this. I'm certainly no English major and I make plenty of bigger grammatical mistakes. I'm just talking about the insanely simple basics and I'm only talking about native English speakers.

What happened? Why is it that no one using the internet or writing texts has any idea about the absolute basics that they really should have gotten down before their pubes came in?

• There/Their/They're
• Your/you're
• It's/its
• Could have, would have, should have, when contracting down to "could've." Seeing "could of" is bad enough, but then you see monstrosities like "shouldn't of."
• To/too

I know the response some people will give: "I'm just writing an informal text or forum post!" I just don't really buy this because if you know these things, you would very rarely accidentally write them incorrectly. And you would never think "should of" makes sense in any universe.

I am starting to wonder if this is a problem that is starting with the elementary and middle schools. Maybe teachers stopped taking points off of papers. Maybe we're in the "everyone gets a trophy" phase where they don't want to make kids feel bad so they just give their papers an A no matter what. This would be like grading a math quiz and giving everyone full credit just for trying.

 

[Rentahamster]

It's the evolution of language. It's also due to humans starting text based communication years earlier than formal English language education usually begins. (I suspect)

 

[Mr Hyde]

• Your/you're

• It's/its

These two are the biggest offenders from what I can tell when reading comments on the Internet. Dunno why, should be pretty simple, but maybe they allow themselves to be sloppy with their writing on the Internet, since as you say: "It´s just the Internet, nobody cares." I think you should always make the best with your writing and spelling, unless you suffer from dyslexia.

 

[Grinchy]

It's the evolution of language. It's also due to humans starting text based communication years earlier than formal English language education usually begins. (I suspect)

Maybe, but I don't really know. Everyone is going to write things wrong before the formal education and then they learn the right way afterword. But it seems like an entire generation has stopped learning it, which makes me wonder if it's a problem with the education process.

These two are the biggest offenders from what I can tell when reading comments on the Internet. Dunno why, should be pretty simple, but maybe they allow themselves to be sloppy with their writing on the Internet, since as you say: "It´s just the Internet, nobody cares." I think you should always make the best with your writing and spelling, unless you suffer from dyslexia.

Yeah we all have the ones that bother us the most. There vs they're bothers me the most. I don't really get too upset by the its/it's since that one is at least a weird exception to the rule, but it does get me. I always read it's as "it is" in my head so when people use it wrong it just makes the sentence sound absurd.

 

[Unknown Quantity]

Can I get half a amstel or half a IPA from old geezers that would correct my English at the slightest misstep is my grievance. Those that correct one mistake then make two should be dissolved.

 

[Vicetrailia]

The path of least resistance (laziness), and phone keyboards aren't that intelligent. If I intend to type too, I sometimes get to. Laziness allows it to stick.

 

[Kadayi]

I'm slightly dyslexic (more missing words out or doubling them than actual spelling mistakes though) which is why you'll often see my posts are edited after the fact. However, I do find the free Grammarly web plugin an absolute godsend at helping me minimise mistakes and it's great for picking up those small grammatical/spelling errors as well as reminding me to constantly use commas. I must admit it drives me kind of nuts where you see posts and people don't know to capitalise I for instance or get there/they're/their wrong.

 

[Tesseract]

imo you're and your should be replaced with yer, context will do the rest

 

[King of Foxes]

As non native speaker, to too two are confusing as fuck and then "thank god" or "thanks god" because my native language is gendered but english is not to the same degree

 

[Grinchy]

As non native speaker, to too two are confusing as fuck and then "thank god" or "thanks god" because my native language is gendered but english is not to the same degree

Yeah, that's why I said this was just about native English speakers. Learning a 2nd language is hard and English is especially strange.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Abundant reading smooths it all out. The lack of a reading habit is the biggest contributor to the problem. You can learn the rules of grammar but they won't stick in your brain if you don't see it enough in the read world (i.e. read it in a book).

 

[ipukespiders]

I always fuck up with than/then.

 

[TheShadowLord]

As non native speaker, to too two are confusing as fuck and then "thank god" or "thanks god" because my native language is gendered but english is not to the same degree

You would need a comma between thanks and god.

 

[Grinchy]

I always fuck up with than/then.

Damn, I knew I was forgetting one lol

That one doesn't really bother me so that's probably why I forgot it.

 

[Kadayi]

Abundant reading smooths it all out. The lack of a reading habit is the biggest contributor to the problem. You can learn the rules of grammar but they won't stick in your brain if you don't see it enough in the read world (i.e. read it in a book).

Agreed. I read a shitload of books in my youth and that is why for the most part my spelling is on point, even if my writing itself isn't always. Also does wonders for one's vocab as well. On the negatives: -

 

[InterMusketeer]

I think people need to take it a bit more seriously, and if they apply what they know to everything they write, it becomes second nature.

That's easy for me to say though, as a NEET. I've got all the time and energy in the world to waste on this stuff. For most people it's just not worth it.
For teachers I suspect it's like mopping the floor while the tap is open. They probably try their best to teach kids, but I doubt children remember and use that knowledge.

 

[Thurible]

Eye donut no.

 

[Makariel]

Hah, I'm just in the middle of marking a report so poorly written, I feel I got dumber from reading it. I don't know how this person ever managed to get a bachelor's degree, let alone get into university. There are whole paragraphs that don't make sense, regardless how you would shuffle the individual words around. Compared to that the GAF politics forum reads like the collected works of Shakespeare.

 

[TheHighFlyingBirds]

Advice and advise are often mixed up, I don't know how though.

Of and off also.

 

[Kadayi]

Hah, I'm just in the middle of marking a report so poorly written, I feel I got dumber from reading it. I don't know how this person ever managed to get a bachelor's degree, let alone get into university. There are whole paragraphs that don't make sense, regardless how you would shuffle the individual words around. Compared to that the GAF politics forum reads like the collected works of Shakespeare.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here!!

 

[Dice]

One that bothers me is "how it looks like" and other variants of the abomination. "How it looks" is fine and "what it looks like" is fine, but "how it looks like" is improper and makes no sense. I've seen this more and more the past several years.

 

[Azurro]

Yeah, that's why I said this was just about native English speakers. Learning a 2nd language is hard and English is especially strange.

Nah, it's not. English has fucked up pronunciation rules and inconsistent spelling, but compared to German, French and especially the Slavic family of languages, let alone the far east ones, English is about as easy as it gets as a second language.

Hell, people are even used to shitty pronunciation, so even if you speak like crap people will get what you are trying to communicate.

 

[EYEL1NER]

It's/Its is something I'll forgive because of autocorrect. It happens all the time to me if I'm banging away at a long post or message and if I'm typing fast, I don't notice that it got changed. I'll catch it sometimes when rereading a post, but that's usually after I already posted it, so I'll go in and fix it.

I do think teachers aren't really grading papers accordingly in my area though. I feel like my daughter has been struggling in school this year and all of the last, but the teachers I've spoken with brush it off. She'll have a D or an F even on a midterm but when the quarter ends it's back up to a B or something. I feel like they are just pushing her through the system, but I'm not quite sure what to do about it. And this is elementary school I'm talking about.

 

[Grinchy]

Nah, it's not. English has fucked up pronunciation rules and inconsistent spelling, but compared to German, French and especially the Slavic family of languages, let alone the far east ones, English is about as easy as it gets as a second language.

Hell, people are even used to shitty pronunciation, so even if you speak like crap people will get what you are trying to communicate.

I found French pretty damn easy in school, and I've heard people say English is hard so I just assumed it was true. If French is harder to learn than English, then it must not be bad at all.

 

[Trogdor1123]

I'd think it's cause spell check doesn't catch those.

 

[theclaw135]

Probably a lot of teachers giving passing grades so they can go home. Students that don't complete their work may be held after school for over an hour.

 

[EBE]

I've graded some truly awful university papers. Needless to say I failed the worst offenders and recommended they visit the campus writing center.

 

[WaterAstro]

English is just an amalgamation of several European languages because Britain kept being invaded by every nation back in the day. It was meant to be changed for the worse.

 

[Azurro]

I found French pretty damn easy in school, and I've heard people say English is hard so I just assumed it was true. If French is harder to learn than English, then it must not be bad at all.

Well, learning a new language is hard by definition, so there will be people that find it hard, simply due to the nature of the task.

However, comparing the grammar to German or French, for example, it's quite simple. Pronunciation of English compared to Polish or Czech is super easy, let alone grammar. We can go super saiyan and then compare it to Russian, which is just as complicated as the other Slavic languages and slaps a completely different set of symbols to write the language in. And we can go even further, since at least that language represents concepts with a set of symbols representing sounds, and move to languages that represent objects with symbols and are even more convoluted, like Japanese. And so on with Mandarin, which expands the available symbol set greatly.

And you add to that, that there are plenty of sources all around people of American culture through music and movies, it becomes one of the easiest languages to learn for anyone.

 

[Ar¢tos]

English language worldwide success is related to its simplicity, not to its difficulty. Compared to nearly all other European languages, it is much less complicated, with the exception of, maybe, Swedish, but Swedish difficulty is the unfamiliar vocabulary (no media exposure worldwide).
The lack of verb conjugation (with the exception of irregular verbs), few verb tenses (real ones, without the use of an auxiliary verb) and lack of complex declensions combined with the amount of media content in English, makes it one of easiest languages to learn.
To a non native English speaker, learning English is the first mandatory step to learn any other language. The amount of language learning media from English to any other language is immense.
To a native speaker i can see how their native language becomes a limitation when it comes to learning other languages, it's easier to learn something simpler than something more complex, and even the phonetics of English are simple/limited (I tried for years to teach the difference of the Portuguese "ó" and "ô" to a group of British friends, but they sound exactly the same for them, while they are 2 very distinct sounds to us).

 

[bati]

I'm slightly dyslexic (more missing words out or doubling them than actual spelling mistakes though) which is why you'll often see my posts are edited after the fact. However, I do find the free Grammarly web plugin an absolute godsend at helping me minimise mistakes and it's great for picking up those small grammatical/spelling errors as well as reminding me to constantly use commas. I must admit it drives me kind of nuts where you see posts and people don't know to capitalise I for instance or get there/they're/their wrong.

Oof. I'm exactly the same and it drives me nuts sometimes. Often, after reading my own posts I'll wonder if I was even awake when I typed them. I also tend to think ahead about what I want to write and sometimes mix words in. I'm not sure if it's because I'm ESL or if everyone has that.

Also, thanks for the Grammarly tip! Just installed and it's great, although I do have to confess that it's driving me crazy right now with the loading icon and automatic reply box resizing every time I type a word lol.

 

[petran79]

English language worldwide success is related to its simplicity, not to its difficulty. Compared to nearly all other European languages, it is much less complicated, with the exception of, maybe, Swedish, but Swedish difficulty is the unfamiliar vocabulary (no media exposure worldwide).
The lack of verb conjugation (with the exception of irregular verbs), few verb tenses (real ones, without the use of an auxiliary verb) and lack of complex declensions combined with the amount of media content in English, makes it one of easiest languages to learn.
To a non native English speaker, learning English is the first mandatory step to learn any other language. The amount of language learning media from English to any other language is immense.
To a native speaker i can see how their native language becomes a limitation when it comes to learning other languages, it's easier to learn something simpler than something more complex, and even the phonetics of English are simple/limited (I tried for years to teach the difference of the Portuguese "ó" and "ô" to a group of British friends, but they sound exactly the same for them, while they are 2 very distinct sounds to us).

I had learned German first, having spent few years in Germany as a child. While it was difficult to learn, I liked the fact that what you read is what you hear. Which makes it easy to grasp. I had issues with British English while in London and French too to understand spoken dialogue.

 

[highrider]

The way I figure, as an American I’m going to sound dumb anyway. Might as well just own it. I do genuinely make an effort to use correct grammar and sentence structure tho lol.

 

[Tapioca]

Using the wrong there their or they're is easy to do accidently. I could tell you up and down when to correctly use them but if I'm just posting random shit sometime the wrong was is typed. It's essentially because they are all the same word with a different spelling.

 

[Greedings]

Whenever someone writes “to” instead of “too”, I read it as “toe”

 

[TacosNSalsa]

This isn't as snarky as it sounds. I'm genuinely curious about this. I'm certainly no English major and I make plenty of bigger grammatical mistakes. I'm just talking about the insanely simple basics and I'm only talking about native English speakers.

What happened? Why is it that no one using the internet or writing texts has any idea about the absolute basics that they really should have gotten down before their pubes came in?

• There/Their/They're
• Your/you're
• It's/its
• Could have, would have, should have, when contracting down to "could've." Seeing "could of" is bad enough, but then you see monstrosities like "shouldn't of."
• To/too

I know the response some people will give: "I'm just writing an informal text or forum post!" I just don't really buy this because if you know these things, you would very rarely accidentally write them incorrectly. And you would never think "should of" makes sense in any universe.

I am starting to wonder if this is a problem that is starting with the elementary and middle schools. Maybe teachers stopped taking points off of papers. Maybe we're in the "everyone gets a trophy" phase where they don't want to make kids feel bad so they just give their papers an A no matter what. This would be like grading a math quiz and giving everyone full credit just for trying.

You forgot to add then/than! I think that surprises me more than the other ones.

 

[bati]

Using the wrong there their or they're is easy to do accidently. I could tell you up and down when to correctly use them but if I'm just posting random shit sometime the wrong was is typed. It's essentially because they are all the same word with a different spelling.

What? No. They're 3 distinct words with three distinct meanings. It really feels like it's native English speakers who most often get this wrong, probably because the rest of us have to think about what we're writing.

 

[SecretSphere]

Sometimes I notice the seemingly lack of distinction between 'good' and 'well' for a lot of people. English isn't my first language, but it sounds odd to me.

 

[Dunki]

Not native so I make a lot of these mistakes but I also do them because I write very fast without checking much.....

I guess the internet and sms did this to me XD

Funny part from Germany. We have a fucking w. In Grade school up to the 4th grade they write how we speak and they do not correct anything. IT is job of the parents to correct their language and writing. Sometimes they even mark the correct wise as wrong because it is differently written.... It fucking sucks....

 

[Kadayi]

Sometimes I notice the seemingly lack of distinction between 'good' and 'well' for a lot of people. English isn't my first language, but it sounds odd to me.

In the context of 'How are you? "I'm good" is perfectly find as a response.

Oof. I'm exactly the same and it drives me nuts sometimes. Often, after reading my own posts I'll wonder if I was even awake when I typed them. I also tend to think ahead about what I want to write and sometimes mix words in. I'm not sure if it's because I'm ESL or if everyone has that.

Also, thanks for the Grammarly tip! Just installed and it's great, although I do have to confess that it's driving me crazy right now with the loading icon and automatic reply box resizing every time I type a word lol.

No problem. You get used to it after a while. You can also get an MS Word and outlook plug in as well.

 

[lock2k]

I'm not a native but "could of" always makes my blood boil. What a stupid mistake. I see Portuguese being butchered everyday as well (by several supposedly educated people).It's a sad state of affairs.

 

[lock2k]

One more thing: I don't believe in hell... but they surely have a special place for those who pronnounce Mario as Meh-rio. lol

 

[Tapioca]

What? No. They're 3 distinct words with three distinct meanings. It really feels like it's native English speakers who most often get this wrong, probably because the rest of us have to think about what we're writing.

They're pronounced the same.

 

[bati]

They're pronounced the same.

So? Do you use speech to text as you write these posts?

 

[Grinchy]

They're pronounced the same.

I definitely do not pronounce they're the same as I do there.

I also don't really believe that someone who knows the difference is going to use the wrong one every time when writing.

 

[JimmyJones]

I’ve always been shit at constructing sentences.

 

[Yoshi]

Using the wrong there their or they're is easy to do accidently. I could tell you up and down when to correctly use them but if I'm just posting random shit sometime the wrong was is typed. It's essentially because they are all the same word with a different spelling.

But not only are they not the same word by meaning at all, they are also all pronounced differently, so how can one claim they are essentially the same?

 

[SecretSphere]

In the context of 'How are you? "I'm good" is perfectly find as a response.

The most common one I notice is "You did good", while meaning "you did well". But even your example, even if it is considered fine as a response, it still sounds weird to me. "Be good!" is something different than "be well!" To me "How are you?" asks about your well-being.

 

[Nymphae]

Good question OP. I suspect it's largely people simply deciding that it doesn't matter if you're correct or not as long as people understand you, which is true almost all of the time in casual conversations/non-professional environments. If people around you aren't demanding better, and can't give you good a reason to utilize proper grammar and spelling other than "because those are the rules/that's how we always did it", you're probably going to go with whatever is easiest/what you see and hear other people doing.

 

[TTOOLL]

This has to do with technology and how often people write. In the past, people would write at school mostly and there you would be corrected. Nowadays people tend to write much more in an informal context where mistakes are "allowed", they end up internalizing such mistakes and the result is this we are getting today. It's gonna get worse.

edit: the funny part is that people have auto-correction pretty much all the time now but just ignore it.