Thursday 1 September 2011

(Spelling) Prejudice

I admit ... I am a huge pedant. And I find it very difficult to deal with speling mistakes. Infact, I find it vrey hard to read aything littered wih a bunch fo blatant spellig misakes.

Okay, joking over, I'd better clarify. What I don't mind:
1) Friends who have trouble spelling.
2) Anyone who is only talking in an informal setting, like a friendly chat, etc.
3) People who have difficulties in spelling that stem from something like dyslexia, dyspraxia, or otherwise.
4) People who make the odd mistake now an then, like that, but are otherwise pretty good.
5) People who try their best to get their points across coherently, but still make a few mistakes here and there.
6) People for whom English is not their first language.
7) Young people.
8) Texts, tweets, and anywhere where letters are conserved.

All of that and more, I don't mind, doesn't bother me, don't bat an eyelid. But when someone is playing up the formality, or on somewhere where you're expected to be able to spell, now that irks me. And sometimes not even then. In fact, most of the time, I will almost completely disregard something if the author spells it poorly. That's what I'm talking about when I say I've a spelling prejudice.

I make mistakes from time to time, everyone does. But when someone just hasn't gone to the trouble of using a spell-checker where they both could and badly need to... that bothers me. For example, I was reading the thread of a Minecraft server earlier that wasn't spelled that great, and thought "I'm not sure if I wanna join this." Purely on the presentation. It's probably an unhealthy attitude, and I do need to try and stop doing it, because spelling isn't the B all and end all (geddit?) and some people genuinely have difficulty spelling, but...

All the same, when I see a near illiterate mess, for me, it always spells trouble.

~Love Leonidas

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