quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut You are both (incorrectly) conflating the disparate subjects of spelling, grammar, sentence structure, shorthand, and writing style. Shorthand is always accepted within its applicable domain (calling out someone for writing "LOL" or "IMHO" would be ridiculous). And it's generally accepted that an informal writing style will be used in an informal setting (for instance, I just started a sentence with a conjunction - whoopie shit! And I also elided several commas, and I routinely end sentences with prepositions, horror of horrors). Spelling and grammar are not components of a specific writing style, and certainly not tied to formal writing. They represent basic literacy. Piss-poor writing may eventually be understood by the reader, but not as readily as clean writing and often with more risk of misinterpretation. More to the point, it simply makes one appear uneducated and lazy, because every individual is taught these skills from an early age and [ostensibly] uses them on a regular basis. It's no different from choking out the word "nucular" in speech. Simply because many, or "the majority" of people seem unable or reluctant to write with an appropriate level of care and patience does not mean it reflects any less poorly on them. Not that this is actually true - the majority of people on this forum and other forums write with varying degrees of formality, but generally with a coherent sentence structure and without horrible flaws like mixing up tenses or singular/plural possessives. What's more, you're clearly implying with the words "continue to convey" that this "anal-retentiveness" constitutes some pattern of behaviour on my part, but unless you can produce some evidence, I have to respond that you are full of shit. There are only two types of instances where I bother to criticize: 1) When the writing is so incredibly poor that it actually imposes a mental tax on the reader for trying to comprehend it. 2) When the (poor) writing is fundamentally an attack on somebody else's intelligence or education. This is called hypocrisy. It smacks of the schoolyard antics of putting down someone else, generally someone who can't adequately defend him/herself on account of being weak or simply not present, in order to gain social standing or merely deflect negative attention away from oneself. It bothers me to see adults behave in this way. As several others in this thread have now pointed out, it's clear from the comments that there is a great deal of hypocrisy in here, from people who are not much more rational or educated than the ones originally being put down. It's sad.

This post is pretty sad. It stifled all the enjoyment I was experiencing here.