Mistakes happen. In the fury of writing long-winded posts (or short, meaningless drivel) it's often easy to misspell a word here or there, or overlook a typo. I have no problem with that, nor with taking a little artistic license to spice up the post if it adds some intrinsic value to the thread. But lately, I've noticed some folks going out of their way to deliberately misspell common words and butcher the English language beyond recognition. To cite a recent example, one poster found it appropriate to spell "anyways" (which is not a real word, anyway) as "Anywayssss." I could go on, but the drift should be apparent. This blatant disregard for decent use of the language creates an unpleasant environment for those of us who still place value on written communication that resembles something above moron-grade level.

My suggestion is that Trap 17 staff make a stronger effort to enforce the rules and guidelines it already has in place to this effect, specifically:

Thank you for your consideration.

I agree with you there, I'm not the best writer myself in the world but I'm trying to write correctly most of the time. It will help in work where you have to write clearly and consisly so that people will understand better. Its also good practice to try and enforce this on members so we do not get too many bad use of english on our forums. Sometimes it is hard to tell if a person is writing bad on purpose or if its their english.

If you spot a post that is badly written then please Report it using the Report button below the post. This alerts all of the staff members so it will be dealt with quicker than waiting for one of us to find it. Like you say, it is in the rules, and enforcing that rule makes sure that the forums contain high quality, readable posts.

Personally I correct posts I find that are written "in txt spk - lk dis" or use unnecessary abbreviations, such as "u" or "r" instead of "you" or "are". I've also corrected a few posts that contained hundreds of exclamation marks and smilies.

Well....

The only problem with targeting every one with bad grammar is that you cannot always blame them for the bad language.

We have to keep in mind that not all the countries in the world are taught English as the first language .
These are a few reasons why a member might have "poor" English :-

1. Living in a place where English is not a priority. (In a place where the mother language or national language is spoken more than any other)

2. Due to bad teachers or their own faults, their English might be poor

3. Just plain old bad grammar.

4. Mobile Phones and their limits


I don't think a member should be warned, threatened, treated like a dunce just because he does not have a good grasp over a language.

On the other hand, It is our responsibility to help members with poor English. I think being members in a "community" makes us responsible for each other's personal growth. By personal growth I mean Self esteem, disabilities, flaws and so on.

I had even suggested to OpaQue that we open a sub forum where members can post useful topics on how to improve their English... But we could not as we needed members who would take out the time to open topics and help members.

We would also need a forum leader who would monitor that particular part of the forum... As we could not find anybody active enough for the job.. We decided to shelve the project.

But If you are interested in it Misanthrope, I will be extremely happy to get the forum started for you You can email OpaQue further IF you want to volunteer for this.. It is not a compulsion what so ever



Been there and still doing that... Almost 15 out of 20 posts are in text language in the FeedBacker section

I once re wrote a post because it had too much of slang and looked like a giant text

sometimes i'm just not in the mood to waste time woorying about how im writing which means you get me writing wrong spellings and stuff like 'u r kk'

A brief revisit of my initial suggestion will confirm no suggestion of “targeting” each and every poster who engages in bad grammar, nor ignorance of the board’s diverse customer base. Indeed, one can hardly spend any time at all on the forums without noticing the broad spectrum of cultural diversity and background, which in my opinion, only adds to Trap 17’s appeal. Few website forums can boast of such “universal” readership – or longevity. No one can fault a non-English speaking member for making grammatical errors here or there. Obviously, it goes with the territory and is to be expected to some degree. Ironically, I find the most bothersome and repetitive butchering is made by native speakers who, out of laziness or ineptitude, find it quite amusing to deliberately misspell and botch up the language. I imagine this creates a frustrating environment for non-native speakers who are legitimately trying to learn the English tongue. And naturally, it just pisses off anyone who places value on coherent communication.

I do hope this staff member is not suggesting staff disregard Trap 17 rules that clearly state a warning is to be given for not utilizing decent English.

No one, until now, has felt it necessary to use terms like “threaten” in reference to this thread - building up a straw man only works when you have enough straw, and even then, the effect is transparent to all but the idiot. Members should not in any way feel “threatened” when staff simply enforce rules that are already in place, and in clear sight for all to see. Further, members have a right to expect a certain level of lingual quality on the forums. Simply throwing the ball back in the topic-starter’s court strikes me as a cop-out, as a legitimate solicitation to man a “grammar” forum clearly would have been made by now. To their credit, the vast majority of members do make a valiant effort to at least write in decent English, regardless of country of origin, socio-economic status and so forth – though I fail to see what mobile phones have to do with anything. In a forum where words are the primary method of communication, it only makes sense to maintain decent grammatical standards, and one has to seriously question why anyone would take offense at enforcing said standards. And when we start making excuses for those who don’t even attempt a stab at decent English, we start down that slippery slope toward acceptance of the lowest common denominator. Somehow, I doubt that’s what anyone wants for the future of Trap 17.

I have to agree that giving a warning for improper use of the English isn't the right move because then everyone including the non-english speakers would be getting warnings, and that would take the fun out of posting. Granted everyone knows my reputation when it comes to writing the English language and I believe I have improved greatly over the last couple of years. Granted I still suck at it , but still to give warnings to something like for not capitalizing the I when referring to yourself or have to many comma's in a sentence, or it being a run on sentence would be a tad anal. Yeah I agree a warning about excessive use of letters and exclamation points would be warranted, but somethihng like the misuse of words such as anyways which is an adverb, but Nonstandard in the academic world.

Of course we cold debate all these internet words being entered into the dictionary world are rather annoying, and you be surprise how people get angry about this words such as anyways. However, Misa you have to remember though that most of the members are kids, and txt msg has ruined most of their minds a bit, and when they do go to college they will face that hard fact, and sadly back when I was in high school they didn't work much on the english language and thus my problem.

Of course you could say you can blame the American's for ruining the English language, but me personally I think their are too many rules to the English language. Granted that some of those rules make sense but some are just annoying, but as to which I have to get back to you on that .

I have to say, Mike, I used to shudder when I went to read one of your posts. Your main problem is you seem to loose focus on keeping the grammar clean. The post above can serve as an example of this. You start out with a paragraph that's pretty much void of anything that substantially tortures the language, but there are a couple simple typos that spell check could've caught. The second paragraph contains "cold" instead of "could" and English should be capitalized, but these are errors easily overlooked. Seems like the last paragraph falls apart, but either I was seeing things, or you came back and corrected it before I could tear it apart. Either way, overall, I'd agree with you: Your grammar and writing skills have improved considerably and are worthy of someone in the high school level in the inner city like in Baltimore or something. A compliment -if you recall what I said about a year ago on that topic. There's an analogy I'd like you all to consider:

In the United States of America, a nation of large, hairy, overgrown children who don't like to take responsibility for their own actions, there's been a growing sediment against the second amendment of the constitution