By the way, I knew an SN funpot who compulsively used an "a" instead of an "i" after an "n" in the "definite" word. Guess what, his "a" bothered me (and others) not, as his humour was far superior to catch my (and others') eyes to his "a" mistake in the "definite" word was.

When the superior contents as a whole are overriding petty spelling slips, who gives a carrot, anyway???

Thickness is when even the contents are begger all IMO.

 

Tel, you're wasted in here. Generally the spelling and grammar isn't too bad. Maybe you should have a word with text spakkers (speakers, sorry) in the general section.

That may be enough to tip you over the edge my good man

 

Deep DEEP breath



CoB, you're right, but small things niggle me. Properly intelligent people don't spell you're as your. Few would spell definitely incorrectly. There, they're and their would never be confused. Call me a snob, but it just shows a lack of schooling, and probably a lack of knowledge generally, except perhaps specialist knowledge relating to their profession or hobby. But such contributions do make up a significant minority, and maybe even a majority of posts, on boards such as this. Make of that what you will.

 

What trap's that then?

And do tell me what my daytime posting activity has to do with my socialising patterns away from the office - that i'd love to hear :lol2:

 

I like to think of peoples intelligence as a kind of RPG game.

Each human gets a set amount of "points" and they can then spend them in various areas, some of them spend them on "brains" while they dont have enough for common sense, others spend them elsewhere.

I know a few people who did the whole uni thing, they "studied" a lot more then me (i dropped out after A level) yet i consider them spackers as they are bassically brainy idiots with no common sense.

I had to deal with a customer a few weeks back, he pulled around in a new R32 golf, i got the impression he was doing rather well for himself, he was not a dick, dressed quite snappy, he seamed ok, i got the impression that he had done the uni thing and was making his own little mark on the world. I served him myself and put him into the carwash machine, at which point he left his hand brake on and started beeping his horn

When i walked over, he said "why am i inside this carwash machine?"

Now i will be honest, at this point i was totally confused, he threw me off with his level of complete spazdom, this coming from a crazy old man i could understand, but this bloke looked like a late 20`s chap on his way up.

"is this not a hand car wash" he asked me, after sitting in a que and watching the lad put 2 cars enter the carwash machine before him.

"will this not damage my wheels?" he asked while his drivers window is right next to a HUGE sign i hade made up explaing that low profiles were at owners risk (i have more then one of these signs up as well)

I then changed my opinion of him, he blatently spent his RPG points on sucking off his boss.

 

To be honest Tel, i learned all that stuff in school, but i have compleatly forgotten it all, i went years without even having to write anything at all and just forgot everything, my memory now has serious flaws, and i suspect this is due to my "younger party days" on the whole clubbing scene

I now struggle to write with joined up writing and can only write fast if i use block capitals for some reason

Google spellchecker saves my life half the tyme

 

Micky, again not having a pop at all, but do you think that "then" was the right word to use in your sentence about your uni friends studying more "then" you? I see that quite frequently and again, just can't fathom it. Or just a typo in that case?

 

See my above post Tel

 

Seamed, aaarrgghhh. Lol.

Similar to speach, and my pet hate, high heals. Noooooo!!!

 

Ah, righto

Computers and the txt spk they have spawned have a LOT to answer for. The demolition of the English language being one. But future generations will probably look upon the speedier method of communication as "progress". It's like a dagger through my heart!

 

Yourr-re`re probz right

To be honest. i suspect the problem is only going to get worse, the last time i actually wrote real words down on some paper (apart from signatures on bank cards?!) was when i was doing my A levels.

Until i took over the car wash franchise and had to fill in some paperwork with a pen (a pen??? what the hell is that LOL)

At this point it dawned on me that i had forgotten everything, if i look back over the past 16 years of Internet usage, it is all crap until the past 5/6 years, mainly because i realised that my English was all messed up and i had to relearn how to spell, maybe this has something to do with teaching an old dog new tricks, but it does not seam to stick in the brain quite as easy the second time around, it is almost like a challenge every time i post something to see if i can beat the spellchecker

The more that kids use computers instead of a pen and paper, the more i suspect the problem will get worse, what is really bizarre, is that i can spot a typo on somebody's CV that is sent to me from a mile away, and i instantly judge them as a spazo

Yet i designed and made up some flyers from work, gave some out to friends and family and asked them to check them over and nobody spotted the typo at all, until i had thousands of them printed out and the customers all noticed it

Reminds me, i must sort out the google spellcheck on this new PC, probably loads in the above text

 

I do have to agree again Tel. Those that can't spell or punctuate love to bleat on about how unimportant it is.

In my job it's beyond vital as it is in many others jobs. If you can't spell or punctuate properly then why not learn (or re-learn) rather than just ignore it? Reminds me of thicko Brits abroad who refuse to try and speak the local language. Ignorant and stupid.

 

Micky i do understand what you're saying, and i don't think your experience is atypical. Just for me though, please spell seem as seem. A seam is what you have on your clothes!

 

I dont seem to have any seams on my clothes!

any good?

 

Give that man a medal

 

I can give a good example of this...

Recently I had several correspondances with a girl from Corus's HR team, with regards to my impending medical in July. Just needed to ask a couple of questions. I wasn't impressed with the replies... little bits of text speak like "u" and "ur", terrible punctuation and lack of grammar. It genuinely shocked me that someone with that skill level in her job got away with it.

Then I went to a site tour as part of my induction and met her - all is forgiven, she's gorgeous

It's simply a case of who you know, not what you know nowadays, and no doubt when students realise this, they will probably find networking more important that crossing the "t's" and dotting the "I's".

Sad but true, up this end anyways.

 

Thinking about the original subject of this thread, I think it is unfair to class all students as "thickos" I believe that the present style of education which is designed to get students through exams, for the good of the school's targets of course, means that the students don't get a wide enough education as I mentioned in my post above.

I reckon that this narrow education does not allow people to develop their intelligence and that students having the sort of difficulties that we see in the original link are not necessarily unintelligent but the problem is that they just have not been taught properly in the first place and that they have no depth of knowledge to fall back on.

Les

 

Thinking about the original subject of this thread, that article isn't about the youth of today. That story is a recollection of an interview that happened 2 decades ago. The student had O levels FFS!

 

This threads is hilarious.........

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Americanisums ( or is it isms ? ) yet...
( in fact I'm not really sure that its a "real" word anyway )

Now they drive me absolutely nuts !

Although no one's perfect & I ( or i ) am a classically trained excessive bracket ( () ) & parenthasis "inverted comma" user...

Incidentally does "parenthasis or parentheses" cover brackets & inv. commas or just commas ?

I'm an engineer by trade ( time served & degree qualified ) and in this business grammar / punctuation is typically terrible.

It doesn't matter, its the message that counts.

 

I'm going to ignore the last sentence

There's no such word as parenthasis, it's parenthesis, parentheses in the plural. And it only refers to brackets. There's undoubtedly a verb for over-use of inverted commas, but "over-grammatisation" probably covers it

 

B*llocks. What you mean is that a lot of engineers have a poor standard of written English - but that's a problem, not an excuse.

Do you write technical documentation at all? Do you communicate with customers? If so, then like it or not, people will judge you and the quality of your work based on its accuracy. It's a good way to determine whether or not someone has a professional attitude and an eye for detail. Like it or not, people will judge you based on it, and you should have been warned about that simple fact at school.

It amazes me the number of people who publicly state that they don't think it's important. Maybe even 10 years ago or so it actually wasn't - but since the appearance of the internet, people are using their written English more than ever.

Good English is a competitive advantage and a way to make a good impression. Bad English takes longer to read, annoys an educated reader and makes you come across as thick. Why harm yourself and your career unnecessarily?

 

It was defenetely a typo.

 

Andy, don't suppose you'r an english teacher by any chance ?

 

No, an engineer!

 

I have no idea when the interview took place, but it does not have any bearing on the point I was making, ie that not having a wide ranging knowledge does not necessarily mean a lack of intelligence.

Les