Do you think that spelling is becoming worse by the year?

You think it's just bad on the internet? There's a Comfort Inn up the road from my house with one of those "spell out messages with removable letters" signs. It had a message for the graduates a few months ago, and what did it say? "Congradulations Gradutes." I kid you not.

Looking for some stories?

I remember seeing a fast food sign advertising their "NEW SUOTHWEST CHICKEN SALAD", and there's a sewing place that I go to that offers "Guarenteed Service".

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

XD

Bad spelling! What kind of word is "XD"? That doesn't even have a vowel.

Now using Trivialis handle.

Alt account of Angeldog 2437.

I remember seeing a sign at a Mc Donalds I went to saying they were accepting job applications.

My family and I wondered if correcting the spelling errors on the sign would qualify us or not.

Edit: Oh hey I didn't know that was a trope.

edited 12th Jul '12 3:35:17 PM by Hermiethefrog

Anything can becoming a storytelling device.

"@[=g3,8d]&fbb=-q]/hk%fg"

It's because Mc Donalds is a commonly used name that automatically gets converted into a wiki word due to "Mc" and "Donald's" being considered 2 words by the wiki. Since many people don't use the escape sequence (this thing [= =]) for CamelCase words, it's easier to make one of the most common ones a wiki word than have it keep showing up as a Distracting Redlink.

edited 12th Jul '12 4:14:48 PM by Malph

News articles these days are chock full of spelling mistakes in their rush to push news out faster. You gotta love people whose degrees are in English and they aren't spelling words correctly in an article.

"Congradulations Gradutes."...I think that's actually supposed to be an intentional pun.

EDIT: OH WAIT I JUST NOTICED IT SPELLS "GRADUATES" WRONG.

edited 12th Jul '12 7:42:03 PM by 0dd1

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Knock yourself out.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

Actually, with the increase of use of the Internet, increase in books aimed toward younger folks, and, surprisingly, texting, the common man's knowledge of English is improving every year.

Do try to keep in mind that until very, very recently, most people were illiterate.

They didn't have bad grammar. They didn't make spelling errors. They could not read and write.

As for the complaints about Facebook, chats, texting, et cetera: the dichotomy is not that of Twittering or writing the next great American novel. It is more realistically a matter of booking faces or not writing at all.

So yeah. The moral is, while 'tis fine to correct, don't be a pretentious cunt about English, because if you were born sixty years before you were, you would be as awful at it as today's most obnoxious fan fiction writer.

edited 12th Jul '12 7:56:43 PM by Exelixi

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

Please tell me that doesn't say "HAPPY CONDRACULA NANCY." I won't believe you, but try anyway.

And the biggest way to take advantage of that is to not learn how to write well!!

edited 12th Jul '12 7:58:32 PM by 0dd1

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I think it's just CONDRADULA. No vampires there.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

Close enough.

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People try, is the point. It isn't easy to spontaneously learn things you weren't taught much about and haven't done in a decade. I don't expect you to know how to turn tree bark into pain medication.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

But people these days are taught it straight out of the egg!! There's no excuse for at least not having a rudimentary sense of grammar and not being able to spell extremely easy to spell words (the latter especially because of spellcheck for most words and, in the case of homonyms like to/too/two/tú, because you should've had that drilled into your little skull in the first grade)!!

edited 12th Jul '12 8:16:17 PM by 0dd1

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People these days. Yes, no person ranging 16-28 has an excuse. Anyone older than that. . .

As for younger people, kids are stupid and don't care. They're kids. They can barely think, let alone express their thoughts coherently.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

Older than that at least until before the Baby Boom I'd say still has no excuse. During the World Wars and before I can understand, but after? No.

Unless they were hippies, which gives them plenty of acceptable excuses.

edited 12th Jul '12 11:34:57 PM by 0dd1

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I think this video is relevant.

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

As is this:

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I think a large part of it is that it's a lot more noticeable now than in the past. Before internet use became widespread most people you talked to or interacted with was mostly through face to face verbal conversations. As a result outside of school you never really got to see how they spelled unless it was something like a letter or a grocery store note.

"If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking"- George S. Patton

I read an article somewhere that people are actually reading more than ever before. Jumping off of what an earlier poster said, nowadays it's extremely hard to be illiterate. Whereas until at least the middle of the 20th century, you could be completely illiterate and still function in society (I'm sure you all have stories of older relatives who can't read or write), nowadays you have to read everything. You have to read on your phone, on social networking sites. So no, I don't think that no one knows how to spell/read/write anymore. It's just another skill that people don't really use often, that's not a bad thing.

I'd think those are pretty important skills to know and use well, though.

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