But if you want people to understand your posts, you try to make them as clear and understandable as possible. Our point isn't about people who aren't able to write in flawless English due to English not being their first language, genuine mental problems or other understandable reasons. When you lazily type some ghibberish and think "let the people figure it out themselves, I can't be bothered to care about proper use of language", you can't expect everyone to play along nicely. Respect is a two-way thing. If I see that someone who has genuine problems with the language puts effort into being as coherent as possible, I cut the person some slack. If someone who isn't a non-native speaker and doesn't seem mentally challenged either can't string together a single coherent sentence, that strikes me as ignorance. There's also the tone issue. Usually, the people who admit their own language problems are polite, apologize for their bad English skills and therefore deserve some respect in return. The "lazy" people, on the other hand, often tend to be aggressive and oddly defensive of their bad language skills, as if that were an accomplishment. In some cases, their bad English skills correlate (coincide?) with a general arrogant, sometimes outright rude and impatient behavior (the "HAY WHY DOSE NOONE ANSER MY QUESTION" folks). As if they had to make up for their inability to express themselves properly with arrogance and aggression. Or, alternatively, their poor communication skills are a direct result of their overall attitude. Simply put: If someone politely says "sorry for my bad English", it's okay. If someone responds to honest criticism of their language skills with "HAY DUUD im not god ad english so STFU y dose dis evn mater", the person comes across as ignorant in several ways. As I said, respect is a two-way thing. You can't expect being respected when you don't treat other people with respect either.
eh, I still don't believe we have to worry about the respect stuff too much. It's a place to come to lay back & relax, not stress out over little shit. Like spelling. For some it's simply their style. Alot of us are friends, and don't constantly school each other. We should be able to get away from all that. Mods are the ones that have to worry about the respect more than anyone, when making presentable statements/rules to members or to important people of the fandom, want to atleast do it a somewhat professional way. So there's a time for keeping it respectful, and times for letting loose. I love all the variety of flaws, purposely or not, it shows more personality. If we all came to TFW with our shirts tucked in then we'd eventually find another place to let loose But here , in GD, it dont matter just dont bite it.
hai guyz dis tead is prtty kewl and i tink tat is ok 2 nut b albe 2 tiep gud engish. srsly y shuld i hav 2 do tat wen u all no wut im talkng abot?
^Good example. Whatever floats your boat, can get annoying but it's cool and helps breaks the seriousness up. It also let's me know that you're most likely a teenager and I should further avoid you instead of demanding your respect. That way I won't get sucked into chatting with a 14yr old. Then my future conversations will go somewhere. It can be a good thing.
omg i luv jrx so much it kewl an lites up and stuf do u own jrx he train and trnsfom into big robt. When it's used as a joke, it helps ease tension and gives everyone a good laugh. If I seriously typed like that all the time I would bleed out from my eye sockets. XD Anyway, minor mistakes are perfectly fine. Everyone makes mistakes, and being a huge grammar Nazi about it is just as bad as 1337 speak. So what if I made the error of typing "tomarrow" rather than "tomorrow?" You can understand the rest of my sentence or post, which is all grammatically correct. It won't kill you. Also, those who are not as fluent with our language often make note that they may not have a skilled grasp of writing in it yet, and those are fine as well. Heck, most of the people I've met over the internet that are not native English speakers are better at it than a good majority of the native English posters. It's quite sad really.
Very interesting discussion. As for the posters who pay no attention to their spelling or grammar even though (or because) English is their native language, I feel sorry for them because their posts won't be read and some people might make fun of them. Not too sorry though, since it's their choice, but that doesn't mean all those people are jerks, either. I've met a couple of nice guys who are funny and clever regardless of their typing style. I think non-native English speaker posters are easy to tell, but it might be because I am not a native speaker, either. Thank you Bryan. for your kind words on my English I thank TFW2005 for helping my composing skills and vocabulary. Everyone says my letters of complaint are so much better nowadays. Though I've been said not to have a great grasp of the language, so I still need practising. *spellchecker picked up 5 spelling mistakes*
I don't see how someone's typing skills are automatically reflectant of their knowledge of English. I know a lot of people who can speak English just fine, but are literally keyboard ******ed. I think it's pretty pathetic that someone would judge another based on their typing/grammar skills. Especially when it's over the Internet. I understand that for many of us it's frustrating to try and comprehend what the hell they're saying ... but just because it's hard for us to read/understand doesn't mean we should judge that person as being lazy, stupid, or a child.
But it's the only way we have got to judge someone over the internet. And when you consider how easy it is to check your spelling and grammar before throwing your thoughts out into the tubes, it is indicative of laziness if nothing else to post barely-comprehensible word salad and expect the people reading it to figure out what it means.
lol pretty much Yeah and SydneyY's not even American and he speaks better English than the majority here, including me. (Im a typo mess )
It's still ok , if you can't read it, scroll past it. If it was worth reading then someone will catch it in a quote or something. It can also be like yelling at the handicapped guy on the basketball team. Just because he can't shoot for crap does'nt mean people should grill him for it. Let him play. The bottom line here is Transformers fans, not English school students, they get that elsewhere. If it's a typo or style, atleast it diversifies a bit. So the elites can easily spot each other out while the more social mature people can stay clear. Very important on a website that focuses on a product 3years & up. Plus omega knight or ka would'nt have been so speshul lol
Not attacking you Gordon just bring up a point. Let's say what if you went to another site that you like better than TFW but it happened to be in japanese? And you only spoke and or typed in the utmost basic form with errors? Would you want them to either try and be understanding and patient or would you want them to say: "流暢に話し、私達の言語でタイプし、次にもどって来ることを学びなさい。" How would you feel then? Knowing that it would take you 5-10 year maybe to get just that? These. A few errors is something that can be easily overlooked and skipped over. And sometimes one should be able to tell broken English from bad grammatical errors. And IMO being all gung ho about "Speak English" is being a bit nationalistic. Which IMO (once again) is getting into political brouhaha. And that's a no no. BUT!!! When a person is blatantly spelling wrong on purpose like Leetspeak it is highly annoying. Unless if done simply with OMG and such dashed here and there on occasion throughout the post. And I mean like 1-3 times.
^RodimusDawg, nice Japanese, though I doubt Japanese boards would be that polite Well, if I actually speak to you, you wouldn't understand what I'm saying with my Japastralian (Because of that people tend to think my IQ's somewhat low sometimes, but that's another worms better left in the can.)
Great now I want a beer. Wait wait wait you mean Japanese with a Australian accent? Need a video of this now!!!
This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put. In other words, the "rule" that claims ending a sentence in a preposition is bad form is... not a real rule.
I can't be arsed to trawl through 12 pages of such hideous English-mangling posts in a vain attempt to understand what on earth most of you are trying to convey, with your occasional lack of apostrophes and typos. Seriously, I'd rather read 20 posts of grammar-less gibberish, than 1 post of someone pointing out a missing capital letter or some such cunt-ery.