Your two pennies worth

[Dave Parry]

Well I think the first topic for me has got to be English spelling and grammar, although I am the Journal Editor, and Website Administrator, I never really went to school as a boy, I hated it from the day I was drag there to the day I officially left, school reunions, phew! No chance, spelling and grammar what are they? I can tell you I have battled with this all my life, Job applications no chance, couldn’t fill them in, in fact I couldn’t read them.

Now my lack of education is my fault for being an idiot in my youth, I have spent most of my adult life trying to do what I should have done when I was a boy which is educate myself what I can tell you which I still can’t understand to this day, is, I now work in a school, yes, how ironic, I am not a teacher, but I do teach children computer skills. It always amazes me to see their faces when they realise a computer is not just for playing games, so why am I telling you all this?
Well it is always assumed that the persons posting a message or a reply knows there spelling and grammar when they post anything on forums in fact one of the main causes of forum abuse starts with someone correcting others on their spelling or grammar. We seem to have an obsession to correct people when we spot a missed spelt word or a comma is missing etc…

Now I am very lucky in my role as Editor of the Journal, I have people in the background proof read every item that is sent to me, my job ‘apart from grovelling a lot’ is to put it altogether in a manner that is presentable for you too want to read it.

So next time you see a missed spelt word or the grammar is wrong have a thought for the person behind the posting before you try and belittle them with your superior knowledge in front of World Wide Web. Not everybody is well educated and it can take someone a lot of effort to pluck up courage to post on a forum to try and fit in to the community, only to be shot down by someone with a smug attitude.

What do you think? I am right or do you think otherwise.

[Denis Brown]

I agree with you Dave. People I know that have trouble with spelling etc all have talents and skills of which I would be proud. As I get older I find that my spelling & grammar skills are going downhill anyway. So I suggest we all communicate and if I see someone has gone astray with spelling I may smile to myself knowing that these very same people would be able to laugh out loud at my building skills. Not doing a spell or grammar check so I hope it is OK

DB
Sproutland

[Paul Holt]

For me I rely on spell check for the simple reason I'm dyslexic. With out that my posts would be quite bad. But having said that numbers formula's and equations are a breeze! Each to their own eh!

[Bob Thompson1894]

It only takes a second or so to use the spellcheck. One of my beefs is with the current tendency to 'textspeak' (txtspk?) which was used to save letters when text messages were limited to a few words. There are no such restrictions now, but the legacy of that grinds on me. Its not just kids, adults who should know better write things like 'shud' and 'ppl'......

[Dave Parry]

Hi Bob, I agree with you on that, the textspeak grinds on me to; it sometimes takes me twice as long to work out what the word says.

As for the spellchecker well you have to know how the word is spelt in the first place to use that correctly and also despite it says it is English I think you will find it is lot more American English rather than British. But then again what do you expect when the software we are all use to using is American.

[Vince Raia]

Hi Dave, well done on introducing this (as Keith would say) "off piste" section to the forum, at least it will keep old Bob T happy as he likes to chat on various subjects
Know what you mean about the spelling thing but as you say, you have to make exceptions for some peoples lack of educational skills, like you, I was terrible at school, completely unAcademic but have learnt more in my later life, and the best thing to do for anyone who is not good at spelling and grammar, is to type it in WORD first, and once it's corrected, cut and paste it into your Forum,

"SIMPLES"

[Tony Collins 1073]

Well now Vince and Dave, when I was at my final school, we were given thirty new words to learn every week.
On the Friday morning we had to take a spelling test on twenty of those words and if we had less than 15 correct we were marched into headmasters office for the cane. Believe me this the absolute truth. I think the entire class became rather proficient at spelling.

[Vince Raia]

experienced that across my **** a few times I can tell you Tony to be honest, I think I was just bone idle lazy, hence I had no interest in learning, much to my regret in later years, I later learnt how to add & subtract by playing darts, and spelling and grammar by doing various writing jobs like Newsletters and articles, although not quite up to our Dr. Keith's standards by any means, but I have found in life that if your good at counting money that's a great bonus I too also dislike the 'Text' style of writing, so do make a concentrated effort into getting my spelling and Grammar correct, at the end of the day, we can all learn!

[Paul Holt]

i agree with you on text speak, i don;t even use it when texting so would never on a forum.

[Dave Parry]

Tony, they where the bad old days, when teachers thought it was there god given right to abuse kids in any way they saw fit they were far too easy at using that stick or throwing something at you or just picking on you when they felt like it. That was one of the main reasons I skipped school most of the time.

Thankfully school is not like that these days kids want to go now even the under achievers, it is a fun environment for them, I don’t believe in that it never did me any harm rubbish, it did and they are all lucky that the law was on their side back then.

[Paul Savage 1568]

Hi Dave.

I was deemed thick as plank during my school years. They have a proper name for it now and that is dyslexia of whom I was diagnosed as being dyslectic although my old man commenly referred to my inability to string a full sentence together as thick. Strange isn't it that they can come up with a word that few people couild spell correctly to describe a persons inability to spell correctly.

I was forced to go to additional, after school, special reading classes in my youth. I didn't really understand why my mum had to take me to these classes nor do I recollect caring much, I just did as I was told and went along. It must have done me some good because although I failed
my English exam I can spell fairly well and also put more than a sentence together. I must confess though that the spell checkers available
to us all today is an absolute godsend.

One thing that I have discovered is that many of those of whom have had a privilaged education are often completely devoid of the ability
to overcome all kinds of practical issues that arise from day to day. This is where my strength is. I see a problem and seem to know how
to get around it or fix it without thinking twice. This ability and my own pride serves me very well in life as I rely on very few people for help and assistance but for some strange reason it doesn''t seem to generate the healthy incomes that are often derived from a good education and the willingness to get someone else to do the donkey work for you and in todays world of the ignorance shown to highly practical minded people, I very much doubt that this will change any time soon

I guess that's just life.

Paul.

[Alan Cantwell 1131]

i wont use a spell checker, if i can be understood, its good enough for me, speak proper english police get right on my nerves,