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The butchering of the absolute basics of the English language - Have teachers stopped grading papers or is it an "everyone gets an A" scenario?

Grinchy

Banned
This has to do with technology and how often people write. In the past, people would write at school mostly and there you would be corrected. Nowadays people tend to write much more in an informal context where mistakes are "allowed", they end up internalizing such mistakes and the result is this we are getting today. It's gonna get worse.

edit: the funny part is that people have auto-correction pretty much all the time now but just ignore it.
But it makes me wonder what happens to them when they are in high school, college, or even writing resumes and cover letters. An employer is going to see these mistakes as a huge red flag.
 

TTOOLL

Member
But it makes me wonder what happens to them when they are in high school, college, or even writing resumes and cover letters. An employer is going to see these mistakes as a huge red flag.

It's getting worse every day, I've seen some pretty absurd things at school.

Btw, I live in Brazil and work as a teacher, I majored in Portuguese and English.
 

Makariel

Member
I personally have difficulties distinguishing between British and American English. Explaining a british person you think you were going somewhere wearing the wrong pants plays very differently as if you use the same sentence with an american.
 
When I was in public high school, the curriculum was just about f**** poems and short stories. I was not prepared for college at all, had to learn how to write a paper there.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Advice / advise

Should of / would of etc. really rubs me up the wrong way. Should HAVE. Would HAVE.
 

Greedings

Member
Why do people fight about getting these things correct? I don't get it. An honest mistake is fine, but saying you don't give a shit just seems childish. It's like you're so precious that if anyone criticises your writing, you have to say English is a dumb language and it's stupid that the words are similar.

Grow the fuck up.
 
I like to think I've a reasonable vocabulary and sincerely enjoy the mental exercise of rummaging around my brain for words.
The same goes for my wife - who enjoys correcting TV newsreaders when they mess up grammatically.

I confess to being addicted to apostrophes. I slap 'em in wherever I can. They're great.

I try not to be too bothered about online literacy. My own lowers when I'm using tablet or phone keyboard, for example.
General literacy is important and is a cornerstone of a civilised society in my view. I'm of the opinion that it's declined, but think the internet and short-form messaging has been a far bigger influence to that decline than education.
 

royox

Member
What happened? Why is it that no one using the internet or writing texts has any idea about the absolute basics that they really should have gotten down before their pubes came in?
  • There/Their/They're
  • Your/you're
  • It's/its
  • Could have, would have, should have, when contracting down to "could've." Seeing "could of" is bad enough, but then you see monstrosities like "shouldn't of."
  • To/too


Isn't it ironic that not native english people use all of this better than natural english ones?
 

Paracelsus

Member
Why do people fight about getting these things correct? I don't get it. An honest mistake is fine, but saying you don't give a shit just seems childish. It's like you're so precious that if anyone criticises your writing, you have to say English is a dumb language and it's stupid that the words are similar.

Grow the fuck up.

You have to say that to the millions of people unable to process elementary school education. That's when you learn "you are" and "your".
I remember getting into arguments with people saying "post pictures of you're (or spelt "you are") waifu" because I knew ESLs would think that's actually correct. And, sure enough, now they think "should of" and "should have" are the same because they sound the same (shud'uv).

Isn't it ironic that not native english people use all of this better than natural english ones?

Americans don't study grammar anymore.
 
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Kadayi

Banned
I personally have difficulties distinguishing between British and American English. Explaining a british person you think you were going somewhere wearing the wrong pants plays very differently as if you use the same sentence with an american.

Pants are what you wear under trousers Mak, unless you're cosplaying as Superman (if culturally appropriate obviously).
 

Dontero

Banned
Because most of people who use internet are not from countries which have English as main language.
For example Slavs don't understand use of a/an/the because such stuff does not exist in their language.
Same with various times which are confusing as fuck to anyone who operates in normal means of just past present future.
you are /you're are other thing most of people don't get and is confusing and why so many people get it wrong. Because in most of languages you do not join words like that.

One thing is sure english you know will no longer be english people use in very near future commonly. It already isn't. IT changed a lot just in past 300 years and it is practically different language from english in midi-evil times or before.
 
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Liljagare

Member
It's happening with Swedish, German and Spanish too I've noticed.

Probarly a common evolution for some reason.

I blame the internet.. :p
 

Ka-Kui

Member
I used to think the same way, but then after further interaction with different people I found that many of those who display grammatical errors is because English is not their first language.

^I hope I wrote that right.
 

Greedings

Member
You have to say that to the millions of people unable to process elementary school education. That's when you learn "you are" and "your".
I remember getting into arguments with people saying "post pictures of you're (or spelt "you are") waifu" because I knew ESLs would think that's actually correct. And, sure enough, now they think "should of" and "should have" are the same because they sound the same (shud'uv).

I would say that falls under "an honest mistake". Also foreigners are immune to this criticism.
 

hivsteak

Member
We’re creatures of habit its hard to break grammatical and spelling errors especially because writing has a dependency on speech. When writing we rely more on pronunciation and the shape of words than learned rules. Its important to know its not a new trend. This link isn’t for a study on english, but many of the same concepts carry over https://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.4759.pdf


“Amongst the various error trends discussed for Sindhi language the one found to be most frequent is substitution errors caused due to the shape similarity of the letters in Sindhi alphabet and also due to the similar pronunciation of various letters. The other type of error found in Sindhi language are the omission or deletion of space character at the word boundaries. From the studied presented for Sindhi it can be assumed that these results and error trends and patters will also apply to other languages that are similar to Persio-Arabic script”
 
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thief183

Member
Part of the problem is the autocorrect bullshit of phones and tablets, my phone keeps trying to correct what I write in italian and after the 10th time you need to go back and correct, you get pissed off and stop caring. It is taking ages to write this post having to correct almost every single word
 

Pejo

Member
I work with grown ass adults that still say stupid stuff like "Explanation Mark" for !

That said, it sure seems to be a lot more lax these days than it used to be, but I think a poster early in the thread made a good point that we do more text based communication now opposed to calls/voice. There may have been just as many people thinking the wrong thing before but we never knew because they weren't writing it down.
 

Atrus

Gold Member
What follows are actual excerpts from my middle managers aka. useless, morbidly obese, sacks of shit:

“I look forward to solutioning this problem with you.”

“What learnings can we take away from this?”

“We must be clear, concise, and not ambiguous”

“The project team has done considerable amount of work in establishing the overarching concept of using risk-based sampling approach to validate and ensure accountabilities”

“Developing review questions aimed at achieving the accountabilities.”

“The Post Verification Review process procedures are reasonable”

If any organization needs to save money, please cut out the mindless stupidity between the people leading the organization and the professionals who have the expertise to carry them out.
 

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
What follows are actual excerpts from my middle managers aka. useless, morbidly obese, sacks of shit:

“I look forward to solutioning this problem with you.”

“What learnings can we take away from this?”

“We must be clear, concise, and not ambiguous”

“The project team has done considerable amount of work in establishing the overarching concept of using risk-based sampling approach to validate and ensure accountabilities”

“Developing review questions aimed at achieving the accountabilities.”

“The Post Verification Review process procedures are reasonable”

If any organization needs to save money, please cut out the mindless stupidity between the people leading the organization and the professionals who have the expertise to carry them out.
As a middle manager who has seen all of this take place in "professional" environments, I agree with this post.
 
What follows are actual excerpts from my middle managers aka. useless, morbidly obese, sacks of shit:

“I look forward to solutioning this problem with you.”

“What learnings can we take away from this?”

“We must be clear, concise, and not ambiguous”

“The project team has done considerable amount of work in establishing the overarching concept of using risk-based sampling approach to validate and ensure accountabilities”

“Developing review questions aimed at achieving the accountabilities.”

“The Post Verification Review process procedures are reasonable”

If any organization needs to save money, please cut out the mindless stupidity between the people leading the organization and the professionals who have the expertise to carry them out.

Thank you. As a useless, morbidly obese sack of shit I fully intend to put some of these to use in my next project update meeting.

Your insights are valuable and I'd welcome opening a dialogue with you to review projections on the net gains to our deliverables that your experiences can bring. Skype me a meeting if you're not hot-desking and we can network. I forecast a positive outlook on our stretch goals!
 

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
Thank you. As a useless, morbidly obese sack of shit I fully intend to put some of these to use in my next project update meeting.

Your insights are valuable and I'd welcome opening a dialogue with you to review projections on the net gains to our deliverables that your experiences can bring. Skype me a meeting if you're not hot-desking and we can network. I forecast a positive outlook on our stretch goals!
Hmm, but does this result in efficiency gains? I'd like to start a dialogue with you and your team about this change to our pipeline.
 
Hmm, but does this result in efficiency gains? I'd like to start a dialogue with you and your team about this change to our pipeline.
All I'm saying is that once we downsize the redundancy that duplication of effort brings, we can re-purpose that resource to the benefit of our primary stakeholders.
 

Grinchy

Banned
I work with grown ass adults that still say stupid stuff like "Explanation Mark" for !

That said, it sure seems to be a lot more lax these days than it used to be, but I think a poster early in the thread made a good point that we do more text based communication now opposed to calls/voice. There may have been just as many people thinking the wrong thing before but we never knew because they weren't writing it down.
Yeah, maybe people have always been this horrible at the most simple rules, but I still wonder if that's the case or not.

I don't have any kids so I don't know what they're learning in school these days. When I see people in this thread talking about college students writing at middle school levels, it does make me lean towards schools just not properly teaching this stuff anymore. I never really cared that much about writing, but the simple rules were drilled into my head at such an early age that I never thought about them again.
 

Cybrwzrd

Banned
Using the wrong there their or they're is easy to do accidently. I could tell you up and down when to correctly use them but if I'm just posting random shit sometime the wrong was is typed. It's essentially because they are all the same word with a different spelling.

As a native speaker? How are they easy to mix up? I can understand mixing up "Affect" and "Effect", but simple shit like "Their", "There", and "They're" is elementary English. "Your" and "You're" is also a common offender that boggles my mind as to how people can screw it up, unless they are just using auto-correct and not making any effort whatsoever.
 
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LordRaptor

Member
One thing is sure english you know will no longer be english people use in very near future commonly. It already isn't. IT changed a lot just in past 300 years and it is practically different language from english in midi-evil times or before.

Not really, Robinson Crusoe is nearly 300 years old but is still understandable to most english readers with a decent vocabulary.

Opening paragraphs:
I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called—nay we call ourselves and write our name—Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.

I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother knew what became of me.
 
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Grinchy

Banned
Your/you're still trips me up sometimes.
Does it help to visualize it? I feel like animated gifs of this would make it so clear.

zCpM6bW.png
 

Shifty

Member
SMS communication via number pad text entry was the beginning of the end.

Lyk 4 god sake no1 cares abt not snding lk a ttl moron. Utterly h8ful m8.

Reminds me of this old 2DTV clip (timestamped):
 
I am not a native speaker of English but I do see lot of natives not knowing how to differentiate “it’s” from “its”.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
Why is it that no one using the internet or writing texts has any idea about the absolute basics

simple answer: convenience trumps all.

you know how much time is wasted by hitting the back arrow and finding the right punctuation mark? maybe this could be fixed with auto-correct but more often than not they throw in an apostrophe in the wrong place, and you spend time correcting the correction.
 

Forsythia

Member
Should of is awful. Another I despise: 'sequal' instead of 'sequel'. I really do not understand how you can make these mistakes, do people not know how to pronounce this?
 

Grinchy

Banned
I am not a native speaker of English but I do see lot of natives not knowing how to differentiate “it’s” from “its”.
Definitely, but at least that one is arguably confusing. Since we use apostrophes for possessive nouns/pronouns that aren't 'it," I get why people mix that one up.

"That is it's problem" doesn't seem wrong to most people, so I'm not surprised to see it used that way so often. My brain can't help read it properly, though ("That is it is problem'). So it does bother me a little bit, but I let the its vs it's slide.
 
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Breakage

Member
Here in England, they started downplaying the importance of good grammar in the 1960s. I don't remember being taught much about grammar at school in the '90s (I didn't go to a very good school). I have literally had to teach myself over the years.
 
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#Phonepunk#

Banned
imo the larger problem is speech policing. if people didn't care what others wrote and didn't get so upset, the world would be a much nicer place. it can be something as simple as ignoring incorrect punctuation. the need to control another's speech is kind of anti-social imo. it encourages territorialism and tribalism.

tbh who the fuck cares? language is constantly evolving, and on the plus side there is all kinds of bizarre new memes and traditions being born of the internet that now span continents & languages. the standards are old ass standards for physical literature that is no longer what is primarily being consumed. older physical literature was heavily policed. on the invention of the printing press there was heavy suppression, church and state authorities would burn unauthorized works, in public, to make an example.

now, that kind of control is a distant historical curiosity, we are living in a Great Flood of works. it is similar to film, tv, music, etc. it is easier to produce work than ever before now, the means of production have been democratized with the internet, not only is it easier to make something (ever-increasing dependency on automation), it is easy to distribute. there is now a mass lack of effort. thus as more people join these trades, the standards have gone down. gate-keeping likely has some effect on quality, as bad as it is with representation.
 
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H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
I see these particular mistakes often made by older people, so it's not necessarily a product of modern educational problems. In general I don't buy the argument that it's informal as it's on the internet - if you write it wrong on the internet it's because you habitually write it that way anywhere. Tbh I think it's just people being thick. One odd thing btw - when I taught abroad, the Dutch kids beat the English kids in English (and the Koreans destroyed everyone in Maths).
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Nah, it's not. English has fucked up pronunciation rules and inconsistent spelling, but compared to German, French and especially the Slavic family of languages, let alone the far east ones, English is about as easy as it gets as a second language.

Hell, people are even used to shitty pronunciation, so even if you speak like crap people will get what you are trying to communicate.

English is an absolute abomination tbh, but you're right about pronounciation being ok and it's in large part due to all sentences coming with a decent number of checksums and extra context information which helps to render the uncertain bits a lot more easily.
 
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