I’m just curi­ous to know if it both­ers other read­ers when you read posts by other read­ers who use bad gram­mar? Of course I cringe when­ever I see a sim­ple word mis­spelled but I get over it. Of course I wouldn’t rec­og­nize half the errors most posters would get upset over. I will go out of my way to dou­ble check some­times that the words I’m using are spelled cor­rectly, but that’s just me. How­ever, I don’t require other read­ers to be gram­mat­i­cally cor­rect. I do encour­age the use of spell check if it’s avail­able to you.

Must say that most posters do a darn good job of writ­ing well thought out posts on mes­sage boards. It’s a skill to express your thoughts clearly and patience to write them so long but I digress. I strug­gle with express­ing myself on mes­sage boards so I’ve pretty much quit except today when I felt com­pelled to leave my opin­ion on posters cor­rect­ing oth­ers on gram­mar, online, no less.

As a reader and in a forum where we dis­cuss books with inter­na­tional read­ers, I don’t think it’s of any sig­nif­i­cance that a reader who posts must use cor­rect gram­mar. Run on sen­tences are the norm. Just read a few reviews and a few blogs (mine included). I know I break gram­mat­i­cal rules all the time but I hope it’s not all that obvi­ous (who in the hell am I kid­ding?). I would like for the post to make sense. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for, really.

Isn’t the essence of the post in a pub­lic reader’s forum sup­posed to be about the reader’s thoughts? Opin­ions? As long as I can under­stand what your say­ing despite all the mis­spelled words and frag­ments — I’m good. You know what I despise more than bad gram­mar? All those damn smi­ley faces when you know the author er poster is being sarcastic—or they’re mad as hell but don’t want to show it. Let me tell you some­thing: I have a tech­ni­cian who LOVES to say “irre­gard­less”. Irre­gard­less this, Irre­gard­less that —I haven’t cor­rected her. Should I? I almost do some­times but I’m pretty sure some­one else has told her. I’m used to it now, hell, it’s been a year. And if your look­ing puz­zled over my say­ing that she needs to be cor­rected — you need to find a dic­tio­nary but quick.

Any­way, no one likes to be cor­rected espe­cially online and in a pub­lic forum. I thought it inter­est­ing that another reader felt com­pelled to speak up about the gram­mar prob­lems online. Cor­rect me? Cor­rect your­self. Eng­lish is not everybody’s first lan­guage. Ah, such arrogance.

Define elis­tism: Elit­ism is a belief or atti­tude that an élite, a selected group of per­sons whose per­sonal abil­i­ties, spe­cial­ized train­ing or other attrib­utes place them at the top of any field (see below) are the peo­ple whose views on a mat­ter are to be taken most seri­ously, or who are alone fit to gov­ern. Thus elit­ism sees an élite as occu­py­ing a spe­cial posi­tion of author­ity or priv­i­lege in a group, set apart from the major­ity of peo­ple who do not match up with their abil­i­ties or attrib­utes. …en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​E​l​i​t​ist

I agree that your post is out there for pub­lic con­sump­tion but you have choice. The choice to hit the back but­ton. Any­way, that’s my rant for this week. It’s a WTF moment and I had to say some­thing even if I am in the minor­ity on this one. Note: I did use the spell check but­ton and all gram­mat­i­cal errors, run on sen­tences, wrong comma use, and any other error you see is entirely my fault. Also the poster who brought this up on the mes­sage board: I respect the reader’s opin­ion but in this case, we have to agree to dis­agree on this topic. And many peo­ple did.

Dis­agree.