I have been wondering the same lately. It seems that half of my peers here at the University of Michigan can't spell worth a damn. Not only that, but they insist on using "words" like 'u' and 'r' for "you" and "are" (respectively). The latter, especially, gets on my nerves. Nothing worse than hearing "How r u 2day?" when someone IMs you (instant-messaging is also another semi-necessary evil); I mean, really, what is that saving? A massive 4 or 5 keystrokes?

Please, take the extra couple milliseconds it takes to spell. Please.

I have been wondering the same lately. It seems that half of my peers here at the University of Michigan can't spell worth a damn. Not only that, but they insist on using "words" like 'u' and 'r' for "you" and "are" (respectively). The latter, especially, gets on my nerves. Nothing worse than hearing "How r u 2day?" when someone IMs you (instant-messaging is also another semi-necessary evil); I mean, really, what is that saving? A massive 4 or 5 keystrokes?

Please, take the extra couple milliseconds it takes to spell. Please.

Did anyone notice that Dharmagirl did not capitalize her "I's" in the last sentence. Just thought I would mention that, being that it is relevant to this topic.

I am a firm believer that pundits throughout history who claim that there are proper ways of speech and spelling which should be preserved are stifiling the creativity of language. I completely agree with poet philosopher: languages evolve. Writing is simply a convention to express the sounds, and the English writing system was developed to express sounds that do not exist anymore. Why have some people started spelling "night" as "nite" (I have seen this in print, not just ironic advertisements)? Because we have no use for the gh anymore. It is simply a matter of getting used to new ways that people think we should spell and weeding out spellings that no longer make sense. I do agree, though, that too much change at once can be confusing.

English has become very convoluted with all of its different manners of representing sounds. Why do we need multiple ways to represent the "ee" sound. We have "ie," "ea," and "ee". It is too much! English speakers are putting in all of this extra brain power trying to keep spellings straight. If we had one spelling convention to represent each sound we would be better off. Of course, there might be instances where certain spellings would confuse, in which case, there would have to be alternates. Language has to naturally work those problems out. Take Spanish, for example. "And" is "y" (ee), but before a word that begins with the "ee" sound, "and" is "e" (ay, as in hay). However, these exceptions are kept to a minimum.

To answer someone's comment about death of conversation, maybe that comes from the arrogance of so called "educated" speakers. We mandate that if someone cannot pronounce or spell properly that he is not worth our time. This authoritarianism of the English speaking elite is quite possibly the reason for this conversational demise (style, on the other hand, is another thing. People's arguments and viewpoints should be made clearly and organized. It just makes everything flow better. I just don't think that spelling and diction are necessarily a part of that).

Let language evolve, but if your personal evolution in spelling confuses people, try to consider the "standard" for now. We will all catch up, eventually.

Andy

i dun no how spellin lyk dis kan be konsiderd evolution.

Also, I guess if it's such a crime to demand that people spell correctly (which is taught in the first grades of schools, which is what makes it even more pathetic not to be able to do), shouldn't we also stop criticizing people for their grammar?  Maybe me want to are typing like this for me are evolutionizing the industry.

Yup, it's arrogance to expect people to know basic grade school stuff.

Messy, evolution has to be understandable. The thing is, we can't know exactly how things will evolve, and we can't know what will be acceptable speech in the future because it takes too long to become fully integrated. Personally, I am not talking about mistakes in spelling and grammar. I am talking about consistent differences between actual speech and writing and the prescriptive "correct" way to do both. The jumbled spelling and garbled grammar that Messy uses to try and prove me wrong is just being ignorant of the way that language actually changes.

If you look at written languages from a diachronic perspective (how they change over time), you will be able to see phonological changes represented in the way the writing changes. Written English has simply not kept up with the phonological changes, and that is why people who have never been exposed to this idea do not feel comfortable with change and have to give outrageous, illogical examples as those in the above comment.

If you still don't believe me, take a linguistics class. I would be more inclined to believe an expert than an elementary school teacher who was force-fed the same garbage that she or he fed you. After all, the duty of exposing new findings in the study of language has been relgated solely to a relatively small group of scientists (yes, linguistics is a science). Unfortunately, people are forced to study the outdated theory that language is set in stone instead of the emerging theories of language as an evolving "creature".

Andy

Let me understand this... When I use bad grammar and spelling, it's wrong, but when others do it, it's correct and anybody who disagrees is closed-minded?

Also, why is my spelling "jumbled"? Why shouldn't night be spelled nyt instead of nite? Why shouldn't like be spelled lyk? Don't being spelled dun would be much easier to say, as it would roll off the tongue with phrases such as "I dunno" rather than "I don'T know". I guess misspelling words is only right if done your way, eh? Any other way is "illogical" and "outrageous". After all, nite's perfectly all right for night, but nyt? !

You still don't understand. Your spelling and grammar examples have not ever appeared in speech or writing. That is what my point ultimately comes to, whether or not something appears naturally. Take a linguistics class.

Ebonics, and AOLspeak. Looks like speech and writing to me.

The human language is the way it is because we agree on it to be so. A chair is a chair because that's what we call it. *Doesn't anyone take speech anymore?*
If I say it is a chair, and you say it's a duck, we have a communication problem.

There is a difference between people who cannot spell and choose not to. Those who cannot aren't so much the problem as those who are reasonably intelligent deliberately ignoring English and doing their own thing because "i'm 2 lazy 2 type it out". Those are precisely the individuals who deserve to have their peckers slammed in the drawer until common sense spontaniously developes and they come to see the error of their ways. (Yes yes, Such an extreme opinion, but I get satisfaction AND my point across with a flair of violence) I stand by what I say, which is more than alot of people who suffer from mild-mannered wisdom do.

One Man, it's one thing to critize another even if they are completely at fault. It is another thing to do something about that insight. Practice what we preach?
I've personally used my insight to educate in a compassionate and uplifting manner.. But my words fall on deaf ears, so to hell with them. I'm not an educator.


COMMON SENSE IS AN UNCOMMON TRAIT: Vive LE LUNATICUS

"In fact Lunaticus there are many methods of reading a person. For instance, does he lean to the negative side of a matter or the psoitive? Does he cut another man down when he errs or does he empathetically lift him up? When emotions are high, does he let his tongue loose and speak without first standing in another persons shoes, or does he hold back and first calmly consider a situation?"

This post isn't about reading people's profiles from their level of cynicism or what they say, but how they say it. You clearly understood my point and knew what message I was conveying, regardless if you disagreed with the fashion statement I was making. I bothered to type everything out, I didn't fall back on my ebonics training. Rather I made sure to put forth the effort. Even if I totally dislike what you say or have zero regard for you as a human being, I had enough respect for myself. I put my best foot foward to be clear and concise. I EVEN "translated" my message into "moronese" so as to communicate better with the masses.

In other words, u go 2 hell..Translation? "My mother sucks goat eggs".

Spelling, along with penmanship and sentence structure have fallen on the sword of technology.

Spelling, along with penmanship and sentence structure have fallen on the sword of technology.

Comma after "structure."

Is it really that hard to see the gap here? Some bloggers believe that grammar and punctuation are required to communicate effectively, and...

sum pepul rely dont giv a fuk.

it may be time to agree to disagree on this one, if i may play the role of the referee here.

for those of you that care, www.dictionary.com is a great way to check the spelling (and meaning too ) of a word...

for thems who doesnt care abot whut them other peoples say, keep doing whut yer doing... and well keep readin about it anyway

Or we can put forth a boycott on stupidity..(But then who'd read my comments?!)

Ahem, those people who do not give a fuk, as you put it..Are the people that qualify as the lazy morons. There is no need to agree to disagree.