Mistakes that make you look dumb

As a teacher, I am generally appalled at the low level of literacy shown by many posters on internet forums.
I am not talking about obvious typos, which anyone can make- although taking the time to review your post before sending it would eliminate most of those.
I am talking about the serious, and constant, errors in simple grammar that so many posters make.
And this is not limited to either left or right-leaning posters.
It's very hard to take anyone seriously when they habitually post semi-literate threads or replies, because if they can't use the language accurately, the chance that they are actually understanding what they read somewhere else to form their opinions is slim.
I suspect that many posters don't actually read much and just listen to their favorite radio pundits to form their opinions.
Or if they read anything, it's just other semi-literate rants from bloggers or gossip magazines that use a very limited vocabulary and often make the same mistakes in grammar.
Grammar is not an elitist thing. It is a way to communicate clearly, and poor grammar can change the entire meaning of a sentence as well as make you look dumb.
The following article may be of help to those who have an interest in being taken seriously when writing on forums, or filling out a college or job application.

http://work.lifegoesstrong.com/7-sp...-look-dumb?utm_source=OB_work&obref=obnetwork

 

Any mistakes I make are missed when I check due to my incredibly high literacy. Ironically enough, to the layman, the higher your literacy skills the harder you find it to notice errors because you automatically correct it in your head without noticing. It's those with lower literacy skills that notice mistakes because it jars them because they struggle to read for meaning as it is.

 

The easiest way to see if it should be 'me' or 'I' in a sentence that has another participant is to remove the other participant from the sentence. If it still makes sense you are using the right word.

If removing the other participant makes the sentence go something like, "Me went to the shops," then you probably should be using 'I'.

 

Dear Teacher,
I totally agree with you and thank you very much for the interesting hints posted.

 

Many non native english speakers here.
Ever realised that.

 

?



Free of charge.

 

There seems to be dozens of new (contemporary) words inserted into our Websters Dictionary each and every year. I've been furiously dealing with the word smith's to get libhater, ******* and libturd inserted into the next edition.

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM"]Grammar Nazis - YouTube[/ame]

 

let me be the ugly American and say, go back to school. J/k, I find it amazing the number of poster' on this forum who have English as a second language and write better then those who have it as a first language. I wish Americans would embrace a second language as much as other countries do.

 

and why?
In school I learned 2 foreign languages, one of them I am using while talking to you.

 

I know, I was poking fun at the subject, not you, I was joking about being the typical ugly American. I wish America would embrace a second language as much as other countries. I always struggled with a second language, although I can get by with my German, its pretty bad.

 

Nowadays its preety important to speak as much languages as possible in this globalized society of ours.

 

I agree with you, and I am probably guilty of a couple of those. But, seriously you're on a blog, not in the classroom....get over yourself. Maybe there is a blog for people with perfect grammer...how about you go there?

 

You left out an even more common one:

affect/effect

In most cases affect is used as a verb: "These changes will affect your life."
In most cases effect is used as a noun: "These are the effects of those changes."
Effect is also the word you want when you want an adjective: "That change was effective."

Both can be used as other parts of speech, but doing so changes the definition of the word:

Affect as a noun is a psychological term for emotional response: "Sociopaths often respond to dramatic stimuli with a neutral affect."
Effect as a verb means to bring about: "His work effected positive change in the community."

In my reading on various forums I think the proper use of these two words is right around 50/50. I even see these errors fairly often in college and occasionally in a few graduate students' papers.

 

Except in America... We have the Lingua Franca.

 

I'm not talking about those, who are already way ahead of the average American by being able to speak and write in multiple languages.
I'm talking about Americans who don't even know how to handle one language.

 

How about you stop making excuses for ignorance and laziness?

 

Maybe if you learned how to use the possessive apostrophe, they might understand you and take your partisan rants seriously.
Although I doubt it. The world hasn't degenerated into an idiocracy just yet, and stupid ideas are still stupid ideas, regardless of their grammatical accuracy.

 

And?
10char

 

When it comes to intelligence, people have strong areas and weak areas. In language, I have tested at around the 50th percentile, while my mechanical and mathematical abilities tested at 98th and 96th percentiles respectively. I can build the hardware and write the software to completely automate your home, easy as pie. These abilities must transfer into economics, because I can see how certain policies will affect other areas of the economy far separated by trade. Concepts that the average person can’t even comprehend sometime come to me with just a moments thought, and I noticed this even as a youngster. Maybe it is my strengths which caused me to neglect my weaknesses, because I do struggle greatly with language. It takes me a long time to write the posts I write, and I’m sure they contain many mistakes, but those who know me personally do not think I am dumb (that is probably a run-on sentence…I wouldn’t know).

As for spelling, is it really as important as many believe? Can you read this:

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe." http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/

...

 

There is a great difference in what I write on paper, what I type on forums, and what I say sitting in the coffee shop. A pedant in the coffee shop corrected my use of the phrase, "very unique" and I thanked him. Of course, my thank-you was sarcastic enough that the others laughed.

When I write on a forum it is much closer to conversation than written communication.

I am sorry if it bothers you.

 

Am I appalled at the lack of acumen wrt spelling, grammar and punctuation? Yes - I am. However, your veiled attack on Conservatives is equally appalling - unless you're going to try to claim here that saying that posters "listen to radio personalities instead of thinking" actually references those on the left (since we all know that leftist radio personalities have the collective listening audience of a typical jetliner crew) as much as the right.

I would also suggest that you fix your three punctuation errors in your OP (two commas, and a misplaced hyphen).

Then, you won't resemble someone in a glass house throwing rocks.

Feel free to check my past posts for errors in any of those three categories. You'll be looking an extremely long time to find even one.

 

Charming, but that's not about illiterate grammar that confuses the actual meaning of a sentence, is it?
Anyway, do that on a college or job application and see how far you get.

 

Your paranoia is appalling.

 

Seems to me that my version of the aforementioned words gives us all a clearer looksee into the behavior and mindset of liberalism and leftism better than most. Its great to see that you would never present views here as a complete partisan. I wish I had your openess when it comes to political ideology and policy.