Lazy writing on the forum?

I will shamefully confess that I fear my forum posting is going to be my most enduring legacy so yeah I pay attention and strive to get it all right GOD DAMMIT!

 

Well, it WAS a thread about lazy writing. I wouldn't have corrected it anywhere else on the interwebs.

 

Lovely topic.
Samuel Johnson attributed his great eloquence - both with word and pen - to never allowing sloppiness to creep into his talk or writing; he very deliberately applied effort at all times.

Like Mel, I've seen the writing of many adults improve a lot by dint of their efforts on (non-writing) forums. Early posts are stuttering, lack confidence and clarity. A few years later, their writing is very polished. It makes a lot of sense to write with care and attention at all times.

Personally, I neither post as I write or as I speak. If I posted as I speak the word filter would blow up... If as I write - when I do write - then I would come across as an utter prick rather than a partial one.

 

Ha fair point. Well I obviously don't post as I speak either, all things being considered...

 

Perhaps... But it seems awful silly to point out individual little ones like that when there are so many other bigger fish to fry... This isn't a critique, and I am pretty sure you don't run around the forum hashing out mistakes rather than contribute to the topic at hand. Why start now?

I made an error, fine. Just seems nit picky to point it out, outside the critique area. If it were in a story and needed correction, that would be another animal entirely.

 

Good job. You simply showed a taste of what happens when you open this can of worms. It turns a nice community into a lame one and as an American it brings up feelings of censorship.

 

Yeah... I've never seen anywhere or anyone on here so picky about spelling - I'd never point out the sort of stuff that everyone's been quoting left right and centre on these threads. Most of us have been perfectly happy ignoring it, and I am perfectly happy to keep on that way.

 

Simple solution, folks -- if the style, grammar, formating, or whatever of a post isn't clear, or doesn't meet your minimum standards, then don't respond.

 

Formatting has two t's.

 

I actually really enjoy this forum because people write so well in their posts! All of the other forums I go to, people write posts that are simply unreadable.

Here are some of my favorite posts from my other forums (Mostly fishkeeping forums)~

"im not happy right now unbeieliable ....."

"im sure my tude would change upclose with one...but i would like that opportunity,i enjoy the sharks for what they are.definetly not aquarium pet,just beatiful in their space..we are treading on their turf my kill them been around for a long time.i myself would go down in shark cage just to be in their surroundings-just for a bit"

"achuealy theres not realy enough places to hide for the babies so no i wont because i have had experanice with guppies and if there offspring cant hide very well then they well be consumed by the parints"

A friend of mine wrote a species profile for a bamboo shrimp. Being that the website is scientific in nature he posted the profile and asked, "What do you guys think of this profile. Does it seem accurate to you guys?" Below is one of the responses he got ~

"try this again i think i fubarred but .i just got a bamboo shrimp is what they are naming in mi.established snail tank ive had him for about a month i enjoy watching him,but i dont have in 20g i have him in 10g with a hob filter a heater at 78 a small fountain pump for extra water movement.2 mhalf dollar mystery snails and puff vittles will he be alright -he seems cool he has his perches for eating which he always seems like hes eating but i didnt notice the 20g min when i got him.holy crap that would make me feel like i paid more for this little shrimp than my gsp i dont want his life to totally suck.he seems fine he was clear color when i got him now he has the browncolorings that make him look bambooey.he also does all the profile things that u guys say he has his couple perches downstrem from current and he just chows so yes cool profile"

Are your eyes bleeding yet??? I come to this forum sometimes to get a break from other forums!

 

I don't think the point is whether anyone else will find the text sloppy. I think it is more about your own development as a writer.

If you make a habit of writing posts as if they will be graded on spelling, punctuation, and grammar, you won't have to work as hard to make your serious writing (i.e. writing for submitting) clean.

 

Decent attempt at polishing up that turd.

 

I agree with Cogito with his first post. I try, as best I can, to use proper grammar everywhere. It's especially useful when I'm being trolled online (I play games online... oh my). I love typing circles around people who use "fag" and "u r so gay" as their go-to insult.

Of course, I'm not the best writer and I tend to overuse commas and sometimes I can't get a thought out well enough to where it makes as much sense to someone else as it does to me, but I try. I think I sometimes, inadvertently, over complicate sentences and thoughts . I can also understand how relaxing it is to just let go and type however your fingers want to move. I guess I'm too crazy to do that because if I see an error in my writing, it needs to be corrected then and there .

 

Well done, I can see only one minor mistake

I wasn't so careful, and then I posted a story here I was motrified by the number of mistakes I was making. Since then I have improved a lot. I have found out that to write better in English I have to start thinking in English. Watching English dramas and movies help.

 

Well with me what you see is what you get, the way I write here is how I type books, this may even be a bit better, since when i get an idea in a book i just go off, just because one is a write dose not mean we are good at spelling, grammar etc, some of us like writing for the joy of making things and don't care about proper English (what i mean by don't care is we know we suck and its not going to kill us)

 

That's sometimes a good attitude to have if you don't want worries about spelling, grammar and such to affect your witting flow. But getting used to writing correct English will help you save a lot of time and energy, and possible embarrassments, when you write something for somebody else to read (not necessarily publications)

 

Even as my punctuation improves and there are whole paragraphs I no longer need to edit - I spend the full allotted time on the final work editing. There are other things a writer can be doing to make that paragraph better.

Although if I did improve and it didn't need much I could increase to 9-10 novels a year instead of 4 hmm. That is one way of getting all those plot bunnies written lol

 

Bad Spellers Untie!

 

Untie?

 

"Terry D's two laws of good writin';
1. Don't let the words get in the way of the story.
2. Work hard at the craft of writing and the art will come."

By the way; I love this!

 

Yes, I can only see one mistake too. There are two other things which some would mark as mistakes but that I wouldn't (the split infinitives and "different than"). Even though these are standard English they might be worth avoiding (when it's easy and clear to do so) for the sake of those who think they aren't.

 

Well I've been writing for half my life I do try to make it better, but there tends to be a point when you just need to write to write, besides not like any of my writing will ever see the light of day

I do agree it can be embarrassing for some people, but I'm use to people not being able to read my stuff, its not embarrassing for me because to me its a simple thing, some people no mater how hard you try will never "get" math sure they can do the problems and get the awnsers80% of the time but thats it

thats me with grammar and what not

can I improve? I've improved 1000 times over form when I started



something i want to point out: I've always wondered why dose every one think Writers them selfs are the best at spelling and punctuation

its common for a writer to have multiple editors and have lots of friends edit the book

while we don't have that on a forum sure we can edit it our selfs, but how many "pro" would would do that here?

I bet you anything there are the "big" name writers who will come here and type like this cause its how they really write


I wonder about that now..

 

I was going to write a whole lot about how a forum lets one write freely, follow impulses and see how others react to it soon after pressing "Send", but now I feel all intimidated.

Gonna run the post through MS Word and leave it for more editing tomorrow.

 

Very funny!

When I used to do psychotherapy groups in the the prison system I met many men with extremely low educational levels, but they were fully intelligent people. They didn't know many words and frequently made them up in fill in the blanks. So, I had to listen hard and deduce what they meant via the context of what we were talking about to understand them.

Others would laugh at these people but once I got to be good at deciphering I found a lot of insight in what these people had to say. Their lack of education actually put them in some unique situations and forced them to develop their own views since they didn't have teachers, or parents many times, to insert ready made concepts into their minds.

Certainly a forum isn't quite as dramatic, but why not?

Years ago when I started having discussions on the net, I assumed that most people were like me in age, etc and that's probably because they were. Now at 44, I realize that there's people I would consider children on every forum I visit. So, yesterday some kid watched Harry Potter and wants to write the next big thing, but doesn't really know how to spell too well yet. In that kind of post, I'm interested in helping them with ideas, to get the fires burning, and not discouraging them by focusing on details.

The only kind of poster I dislike is the "I want to write a book, but have no ideas," because who and what kind of person is that?

 

I don't reword posts as much as I might in a story, because it doesn't have to be perfect. The only deviation to that would be if I were replying to a topic that was being debated, where I would want my words to not be misunderstood.
That said, if I know I can do something better--and it really should be written better (for clarity or otherwise)--I try to go back and make it better.