Xref: utzoo alt.flame:11785 news.misc:3765 alt.peeves:294 Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!jk3k+ From: jk3k+@andrew.cmu.edu (Joe Keane) Newsgroups: alt.flame,news.misc,alt.peeves Subject: Re: People who only look at spelling!!!! Message-ID: Date: 1 Nov 89 07:35:14 GMT References: <4487@deimos.cis.ksu.edu> Distribution: usa Organization: Mathematics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 30 In-Reply-To: <4487@deimos.cis.ksu.edu> In article <4487@deimos.cis.ksu.edu> ksh@phobos.cis.ksu.edu (Karl S. Hagen) raves about ``people who don't look at an article for what it contains/means, but look at it for how it is written.'' Come on Karl, do you really think people go around reading postings just to find spelling or grammar mistakes? Give us a break. If someone complains about your spelling or grammar, it may be because they and the other thousands of readers can't understand what you wrote. Why should i waste my time trying to decipher a post written by some jerk who doesn't care enough to make it parseable on the first pass? I understand that it may be difficult for you to remember the spellings of 12-letter foreign-looking words. If you're unsure of a spelling, do what you were taught in elementary school and _use a dictionary_. That way you'll learn it, and know it next time, rather than remaining ignorant. But my real peeve is about the small words that you're supposed to have learned in elementary school. An amazing number of people don't understand that "its" is the possessive of "it", and "it's" is a contraction of "it is", and apparently they don't care to find out. This is understandable if you're still in junior high, or English isn't your native language, but for grown men and women who supposedly have three-digit IQ's it's pretty sad. For those of you who cut second grade, "their" is the possessive of "they", "they're" is a contraction of "they are", and "there" is an adverb, the opposite of "here". Get them straight. It might not matter if you read by saying words out loud, but it sure matters to me and most readers. Note: "you" is impersonal and doesn't refer to Karl, unless of course you're reading this on alt.flame.