Standard of spelling

Re: \"One assumes people who can afford a boat can spell

Touche! (don't know how to put the acute accent on the 'e'). I was writing as if 'brother' were the first word in the sentence, but of course it wasn't in the quote I used.

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Re: \"One assumes people who can afford a boat can spell

...and "it's" instead of "its" all too frequently. It's the education system, y'know:-)

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Re: we dont make it easy

Look at this.

Reasons Why English is so Hard to Learn!
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in an eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. You park in the driveway, but you drive on the parkway. You ship by truck and send cargo by ship. How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on. When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And finally, how about when you want to shut down your computer you have to hit "START"!!

BrianJ


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What?

Yes, I am reading this in Reading, but I must have stumbled upon the wrong forum as I was looking for a forum that was there to discuss boating things...
Never mind, I will continue to look.

Thanks
Mike.
Ooops, I just hit F7 for spell check...DOH!

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Re: \"One assumes people who can afford a boat can spell

The "Arthur Wood" from TOG???

That's also a huge problem, plural, possessive, & abreviation (that's a point. How many b's in abbreviation?!!)

Normally I trust my judgement. If it looks right when typed or written it usually is right.


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Re: \"One assumes people who can afford a boat can spell

yes, the type & speed of internet connection must affect how we type our messages and whether we can afford the time to go back read them through & make corrections.

Those of us with the luxury of broadband can afford to spend time editing, & correcting, but with normal pay-as-you go dial up or ISDN I suppose you have to get on with it, and to hell with punctuation, grammar & spelling.

Still, I do think we're taking this a bit too seriously. I repeat that I wasn't "having a go" just pointing out that some amusing mis-interpretations can be made by the odd grammatical or spelling error on this forum.

;-)

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Re: What?

F7 gives a spell check? Not on my machine it doesn't. Am I missing something here?

Anyway we have enough problems with boating terms - rowlocks, gunwale etc.

Apologies for being off message for once. Still it's caused a bit of activity!

;-)

<hr width=100% size=1><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by surekandoo on 01/08/2003 09:24 (server time).</FONT></P>
 
Guilty as charged!

Whoops, OK, it was me what got one of them words wrong. Daren't tell you what I used to do for a living!!! Having checked the time of the posting (I'm one hour ahead of my computer clock!) I can emphatically state that it was definitely the vino. Comments on split infinitives welcome.

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Re: Guilty as charged!

AAARRGH not the splat infinitive, please! It's horrid.
And how about something I find often here in Italy, usually on shop signs or on t-shirts: the misuse of our dear old genitive. Some bright spark wants to plonk, say, 'A life of action' on a t-shirt (don't ask me why; they do!) and says, 'Aha! Mi ricordo del genitivo anglosassone a scuola'. And writes 'Action's life'.
Nuff said

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Re: Guilty as charged!

It would be nice if you were to actually tell us illiterates what a split infinitive was, as to further complicate things by not doing so is to seriously cripple our ability to comment as requested!!

John

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Okay - I admit it - I am a bit of a pedant when it comes to language. What is more I think language does matter.

In any written environment, language is the primary means of expressing ideas, so poor use of language inevitably impacts the communication of ideas.

Poor spelling too is important. Reading the "why English is difficult" posting above, it is surprising how good the brain is at using context to determine the word meaning. In many cases I had to read the line twice to discover which words looked identical, because on first pass the brain had worked it out correctly without conscious thought.

Mis-spelling makes it much harder for the brain to do this "magic" and so makes it harder to read, hence understand, the meaning.



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Re: \"One assumes people who can afford a boat can spell

While we are talking about style, one should never use a long word when an abbreviated one would do...

John

PPS Seriously tho, one error that an awful lot of posters make is using "your" when they mean "you're".

PPS Just been reading a biography of George Bernard Shaw who was strongly against the tyrany of redundant letters in words. He seriously wanted to completely overhaul the English "alfabet" to rid words of these redundancies.



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Two Fingers or Ten?

I wonder how many of those with imperfect spelling are able to touch type? (Use all ten fingers and NOT look at the keyboard). Is their spelling as bad when they put pen to paper? How many of you can find the apostrophe or the exclamation mark on the keyboard without looking?

Some of the subject matter raised on the forum can be heard being discussed amongst lots of different groups of people, however on the forum all responses are by the written word. So, if you are keen to put your point of view forward and are not an expert typist then it is quite understandable that spelling/grammar may be of secondary importance.

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