For me, its the overuse of LOL. "I plan on buying the new iPhone but I sold my old one for almost the same price lol so now I get a new one for hardly anymore money lol."
For me, its the overuse of LOL. "I plan on buying the new iPhone but I sold my old one for almost the same price lol so now I get a new one for hardly anymore money lol."
it mite be atorcious speling or teh frqnt us f abbrevs tht mt nt b obvi 2 cazh rdrs although it also annoys me when theirs no punctuation and you have to guess where sentence breaks are supposed to be which istn always cleaer when the whole post is written in stream of conciousness style and is especially hard to follow if the person making the post has some mac problem their describing and they hope someone can help but who the hell can follow the tortured writing and meandering style even though they provide some details like its a mbp 10 which i guess means macbook pro 2010 but about half the time well maybe a quarter but getting close to half the model they say they have isnt actually a model for that year because althgough they bought it in 2010 it was actually a 2009 model but they didn't realize it at the time because they werent paying attention that the place they bought it from was closing out old inventory and of course apple doesnt put year labels on the boxes so thats confusing as hell just like this post up to this point although i had to force myself to not correct some typos and aoivd punctuation like aprostophes or commans or even extra spaces that might be a cluse to sentence breaks anyway if youve made it this far i have to say thanks and plzz plzz plzz help me because im despearate and have no idea where else to go
thnaks in advance
it mite be atorcious speling or teh frqnt us f abbrevs tht mt nt b obvi 2 cazh rdrs although it also annoys me when theirs no punctuation and you have to guess where sentence breaks are supposed to be which istn always cleaer when the whole post is written in stream of conciousness style and is especially hard to follow if the person making the post has some mac problem their describing and they hope someone can help but who the hell can follow the tortured writing and meandering style even though they provide some details like its a mbp 10 which i guess means macbook pro 2010 but about half the time well maybe a quarter but getting close to half the model they say they have isnt actually a model for that year because althgough they bought it in 2010 it was actually a 2009 model but they didn't realize it at the time because they werent paying attention that the place they bought it from was closing out old inventory and of course apple doesnt put year labels on the boxes so thats confusing as hell just like this post up to this point although i had to force myself to not correct some typos and aoivd punctuation like aprostophes or commans or even extra spaces that might be a cluse to sentence breaks anyway if youve made it this far i have to say thanks and plzz plzz plzz help me because im despearate and have no idea where else to go
thnaks in advance
I haven't darkened the door of an educational establishment for the best part of a decade (apart from giving an annual and occasional additional guest lecture), but I do recall, as I approached the latter part of my teaching career, being instructed by my head of dept not to correct their grammar, syntax, spelling, (often atrocious) in term papers, or take issue with the self-indulgent silliness of stream of consciousness essays. "You are teaching them politics (and history), not English," he said
Things have changed. At least in the US. Now you are responsible for cross-curricular teaching, so that no matter what you teach, you have to include maths. No matter what you teach, you much include reading. Honestly, it's becoming a challenge to teach a content area!
it mite be atorcious speling or teh frqnt us f abbrevs tht mt nt b obvi 2 cazh rdrs although it also annoys me when theirs no punctuation and you have to guess where sentence breaks are supposed to be which istn always cleaer when the whole post is written in stream of conciousness style and is especially hard to follow if the person making the post has some mac problem their describing and they hope someone can help but who the hell can follow the tortured writing and meandering style even though they provide some details like its a mbp 10 which i guess means macbook pro 2010 but about half the time well maybe a quarter but getting close to half the model they say they have isnt actually a model for that year because althgough they bought it in 2010 it was actually a 2009 model but they didn't realize it at the time because they werent paying attention that the place they bought it from was closing out old inventory and of course apple doesnt put year labels on the boxes so thats confusing as hell just like this post up to this point although i had to force myself to not correct some typos and aoivd punctuation like aprostophes or commans or even extra spaces that might be a cluse to sentence breaks anyway if youve made it this far i have to say thanks and plzz plzz plzz help me because im despearate and have no idea where else to go
thnaks in advance
Funny you guys mentioned the horrible spelling and grammar online nowadays. I just assumed that the world as a whole was becoming less literate, so to speak, because of the internet, texting, etc. But more people are reading and writing then ever before. Texts, blogs, forums, social media, everyone is a writer and a reader now. Unfortunately, many people are not good writers or readers but I you take the good, you take the bad, As the song goes.
Funny you guys mentioned the horrible spelling and grammar online nowadays. I just assumed that the world as a whole was becoming less literate, so to speak, because of the internet, texting, etc. But more people are reading and writing then ever before. Texts, blogs, forums, social media, everyone is a writer and a reader now. Unfortunately, many people are not good writers or readers but I you take the good, you take the bad, As the song goes.
When I started teaching, at third level, in the late 80s, the essays written by an average 18 year old student (or, even a bright student who wasn't full at ease with putting thoughts on paper) read as though the kid was around 15 with the language and vocabulary of a 15 year old; now, the vocabulary of a 15 year will suffice to write about the kind of stuff you study at university - adult courses, concepts, themes and so on - it will just read somewhat awkwardly.
In fairness, by the time most of those kids graduated, their vocabulary had caught up with the world they were describing, and was more than adequate to the task set.
However, by the time I left teaching, around a decade ago, I felt that the average 18 year old was starting university with the vocabulary of a 12 year old. And the vocabulary of a 12 year old is not sufficient in that context. There was nothing wrong with their brains or their comprehension - they understood what was happening; it is just that they lacked the writer means to convey that, their vocabulary was insufficient to describe dissect and critically analyse the material that they were supposed to have studied.
I think it's that the level of discourse all around us in daily life, at least with respect to news and politics, has deteriorated.
Television is a great leveler in that regard. It's one thing to be exposed to say a half hour of a network news reader's use of language. It's another to realize that people often now leave their TVs on all the time, as if the infernal things were just part of the furniture, and so as a nation and planet we are exposed more often to the lowest common denominators of language in use on cable TV, whether it's political commentary or a sitcom.
Are the conversations at least more forthright, down to earth, so more honest?
That's an argument I have heard from some quarters, i.e., well we're not all William F. Buckley fans looking for people who harangue us in paragraphs that may as well have come straight out of 19th century philosophy texts.
Some us claim we just want to hear a person call a spade a spade instead of "a tool with a sharp-edged, typically rectangular, metal blade and a long handle." Everyone knows what a spade is [but... actually, not everyone does]. The thing is, there may be a price for acting on that desire to have everything kept simple.
Maybe the political conversations of today's TV fare are not more honest, even if they are often less formal and so easier to hear and participate in. We're all certainly more marketed to. We get told stuff before we are curious enough to ask, sometimes. We get told there's A or there's B, take your pick, I recommend B. Well... there could maybe be a C... but I may not have time to think about that just now. Later on all I remember is someone said take plan B?
There are many more marketers out there, trying to speak as if they were just people like you or me. They are killing us softly in words we understand, or killing us with a deceptively simple-looking curveball, take your pick.
Not all of us have been taught that it's up to us to explore whether or not what is being sold to us is a bill of goods or the real deal. Shiny stuff... bling... is not just stuff of the material realm. It's also glittery ideas with nothing behind them. These can be ideas about what's fun to wear, what's cool to buy, what's hip to be interested in, which pols to believe, which movie genres are passé.
At some point a lot of us may have lost track of the idea that developing one's interests, principles, beliefs into an integrated self, and keeping up with pop culture, are two different things. Or we kept hold of that for ourselves, but forgot to pass on to our kids that it's important to sort things out for themselves while making that distinction.
The thing to remember about marketers is that the last thing on their mind is sharing the secrets of how to apply critical thinking to what one hears or reads. They keep things pretty simple, and leave nuance out of it. None of that can end up expanding a person's grasp of complex thought and the vocabulary that may accompany it.
So now half the time we all sound like the most challenging thing we've ever read is the fine print on how simple it is to open a childproof bottle of vitamins. How then to answer a kid's question about some political issue of the day, or encourage him or her to skip a news aggregation site in favor of a trial subscription to a particular newspaper or magazine?
We've bought that "keeping it simple" bill of goods for sure. Except it's maybe more like keeping us simple. I'm not sure who created that platform, but it's been a massive hit all around the world, seems to me. Sure there's no need to make things more complicated than they are. There's no reason to pretend everything's as simple as a binary choice either.
Still time to make a u-turn and maybe it's even happening as I write this post. I'm not in the trenches of education these days and I was only ever on the sidelines with friends who were academics.
My mouse is warn from liking all these comments. Seriously though the standard of literacy has fallen and it is a problem that started well before Twitter. Is it modern mass media? Not just the internet but the culmination of radio, TV as well?
… I just assumed that the world as a whole was becoming less literate, so to speak, because of the internet, texting, etc. But more people are reading and writing then ever before…
it mite be atorcious speling or teh frqnt us f abbrevs tht mt nt b obvi 2 cazh rdrs although it also annoys me when theirs no punctuation and you have to guess where sentence breaks are supposed to be which istn always cleaer when the whole post is written in stream of conciousness style and is especially hard to follow if the person making the post has some mac problem their describing and they hope someone can help but who the hell can follow the tortured writing and meandering style even though they provide some details like its a mbp 10 which i guess means macbook pro 2010 but about half the time well maybe a quarter but getting close to half the model they say they have isnt actually a model for that year because althgough they bought it in 2010 it was actually a 2009 model but they didn't realize it at the time because they werent paying attention that the place they bought it from was closing out old inventory and of course apple doesnt put year labels on the boxes so thats confusing as hell just like this post up to this point although i had to force myself to not correct some typos and aoivd punctuation like aprostophes or commans or even extra spaces that might be a cluse to sentence breaks anyway if youve made it this far i have to say thanks and plzz plzz plzz help me because im despearate and have no idea where else to go
thnaks in advance
But if they occur too frequently, it can be a sign of uterine polyps. Be aware.Good point...and the healing power of a period or two is magical!
LOLFor me, its the overuse of LOL. "I plan on buying the new iPhone but I sold my old one for almost the same price lol so now I get a new one for hardly anymore money lol."
My pet peeve is when people join a forum where certain types of behaviour are not tolerated then complain when they are pulled up for exhibiting those types of behaviour.I hate being reported for merely being rude, abrasive, insulting, and foul-mouthed. I mean, grow another layer of skin for heaven’s sake.
My pet peeve is when people join a forum where certain types of behaviour are not tolerated then complain when they are pulled up for exhibiting those types of behaviour.![]()
- People who just learned what logical fallacies are and (sometimes incorrectly) point them out in discourse by simply saying the fallacy's name. (E.g. responding "AD HOMINEM!!1!!" to "Only an idiot would think…")
- Ending a post with a single emotive word. (E.g. "… Sad." "… Liar!")
- EDIT: +1 posts. Why not just up-vote or explain why you like a post?
- Last one is MR-specific: purporting to know what Apple's late CEO would never allow. If we can pretend to read minds, there's no reason to provide balanced logical criticism; you can always say something isn't what someone else thinks it should be. It's a pet peeve that's impelled me to create this stock image response: