I have a thorn in my butt atm

[Wilbur]

<Insert Al Murray comment here>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtXl_TyM6aI

[Squiggoth]

Guys, no one is curbing anyone else's unique flower nature here. But this is a mostly text-based community. We mainly communicate through text. In fact, there is even a German-based section for those that either a)don't want to hassle with English, b)wish to just stick to native tongue, or whatever.

But I am going to have to agree with beyond-tec here. It seems as though people don't even try....if you read enough of the English in these forums you'll get a general gist of how basic words are spelled, and you might correct yourself. It just doesn't seem like that happens though in certain people's cases.

It's relatively easy to share ideas with people who don't speak English as their native language. I can easily see who is trying to make an effort to communicate and who is just verbal diarhea'ing all over the forums.

It's very frusterating to share ideas and concepts with those who probably have really great ideas but just choose to ignore any kind of sentence structure, basic "easy" word spelling, etc.

Go read Elitistjerks.com (they're called that for a reason). They're considered the best repository and resource for any WoW high-end discussions on theory and practice. They give people infractions for grammatically incorrect posts, shortened posts (u r 2 funny lol), etc. They'll even ban folks for repeated posts of that nature. Yet half if not more of their userbase is European and probably a half of that is non-native-English speaking. Yet they make an effort to have good dialogue in good English so the rest of us can enjoy and understand.

I'm SO not suggesting we moderate to that degree. But if I spell it color and you spell it colour it's obviously something we can look past. I think anyone who thinks that beyond's point is that there are differences in how we spell things is missing the point.

It's the sort of "I'm going to be lazy and not even attempt to match the language that is being used on this forum" that's the problem. I know I'll get flamed for that by at least one person as being "Americentric and ignorant" but a)I don't care and b)I think you'd find me surprisingly Worldcentric, especially having played EVE all these years (and being completely self-American-loathing to boot).

Anyway, enough ranting from me. =) Play hard, enjoy, and keep in mind: "reread", "proofread", "correct". And that's all anyone ever asks.

[elo]

Heh, I thought Skuggomann set the bar pretty low for criticizing people on their spelling or grammar.

[Contents]

Honestly, I think Skuggo has quite a bit of good info, however I always thought that he could speak english, but wasn't the greatest at writing it.

Which in turn makes it look like he is trying to be a 1337 kiddy, but I do believe that he is trying... overall the ones I've seen seem to be getting a bit better.

Now some of these new posters with their "Lawls, 2, r, u, ur" I say ban them, but then I'm a complete ass to people that are too lazy to move their fingers to one or two more keys.

...I was kind of joking about the banning... kind of.

[Eteocles]

Skipped most of the arguing; Color is a legit spelling. :P Language is an evolving thing, most of your words you stole and bastardized from another base language(Latin, Hebrew, etc) so noone can talk ;p

However, I do agree with the hate on l33t/weeaboo speek. Back in my early aol days I was sadly among these fools using letters as words but then I grew up and realized I didn't want to look like a retard online, and thus my giving half a shit about spelling happened ;p Yea, it's online/a game/"anonymous" but you're still there in spirit/essence; you are making yourself look stupid if you don't care to try. This does not apply to those whose 2nd or more language is English and try, though, they have a very good excuse. English is confusing and half the people who speak it as a 2nd language speak it better than natural-born Americans who aren't retarded but damn well try to act like it.

In closing, echoing OP: Have some patience, give 'em the benefit of the doubt at first, only ridicule them after/if they prove to just be stupid, not foreign :p I'ts the internet age, the oncoming of a single worldwide language is on it's way

[torelorm]

I am personally quite distressed over the current crossover of cell phone text messaging to online forums. While English (either the Queen's English or the correct way) might not be your first language there is absolutely no reason to use "words" such as: u, wut, any1, sum1, or any other insane text message abbreviation.

I would have to say "u" is my biggest pet peeve. I can understand the utilization of an acronym such as "WoW" rather than "World of Warcraft" for each occurrence or very common acronyms the likes of AV, PvP, GoA, et al. On the other hand "u" is only short for "lazy". I have yet to fully understand the need to save those two characters unless for some reason your phpBB links charge by the letter.

There are excellent ways to double check your work before you post. One way would be with Firefox's built in spell check capability and the second would be a site such as spellcheck.net which also works well.

Finally, keep one other thing in mind: searching. While it may seem cool or hip to use the latest Internet abbreviations and "l33t speak" it makes textual searching impossible. Remember that the next time you reply with "use the search" and before you post. If you make things harder to find then you make the search capability much less useful than it should be.

If English is not your first language then do your best and at least run a spell check. If, on the other hand, English is your primary language then there is little reason to not make an attempt at proper grammar and spelling.

[Fancyz]

I am personally quite distressed over the current crossover of cell phone text messaging to online forums. While English (either the Queen's English or the correct way) might not be your first language there is absolutely no reason to use "words" such as: u, wut, any1, sum1, or any other insane text message abbreviation.

I would have to say "u" is my biggest pet peeve. I can understand the utilization of an acronym such as "WoW" rather than "World of Warcraft" for each occurrence or very common acronyms the likes of AV, PvP, GoA, et al. On the other hand "u" is only short for "lazy". I have yet to fully understand the need to save those two characters unless for some reason your phpBB links charge by the letter.

There are excellent ways to double check your work before you post. One way would be with Firefox's built in spell check capability and the second would be a site such as spellcheck.net which also works well.

Finally, keep one other thing in mind: searching. While it may seem cool or hip to use the latest Internet abbreviations and "l33t speak" it makes textual searching impossible. Remember that the next time you reply with "use the search" and before you post. If you make things harder to find then you make the search capability much less useful than it should be.

If English is not your first language then do your best and at least run a spell check. If, on the other hand, English is your primary language then there is little reason to not make an attempt at proper grammar and spelling.

i can explain it for you rather easily why people use words like "u" "wth" "WoW" etc, and its very simple to understand this...

its FASTER to type out stuff like that then it is to say World of Warcraft.

i only use shortforms just because im usually posting on several forums at a time (no im not trolling like Eteocles) therefor faster typing means i can get back to wow sooner


kkthnx

[marvein]

I am personally quite distressed over the current crossover of cell phone text messaging to online forums. While English (either the Queen's English or the correct way) might not be your first language there is absolutely no reason to use "words" such as: u, wut, any1, sum1, or any other insane text message abbreviation.

I would have to say "u" is my biggest pet peeve. I can understand the utilization of an acronym such as "WoW" rather than "World of Warcraft" for each occurrence or very common acronyms the likes of AV, PvP, GoA, et al. On the other hand "u" is only short for "lazy". I have yet to fully understand the need to save those two characters unless for some reason your phpBB links charge by the letter.

There are excellent ways to double check your work before you post. One way would be with Firefox's built in spell check capability and the second would be a site such as spellcheck.net which also works well.

Finally, keep one other thing in mind: searching. While it may seem cool or hip to use the latest Internet abbreviations and "l33t speak" it makes textual searching impossible. Remember that the next time you reply with "use the search" and before you post. If you make things harder to find then you make the search capability much less useful than it should be.

If English is not your first language then do your best and at least run a spell check. If, on the other hand, English is your primary language then there is little reason to not make an attempt at proper grammar and spelling.

i can explain it for you rather easily why people use words like "u" "wth" "WoW" etc, and its very simple to understand this...

its FASTER to type out stuff like that then it is to say World of Warcraft.

i only use shortforms just because im usually posting on several forums at a time (no im not trolling like Eteocles) therefor faster typing means i can get back to wow sooner


kkthnx

only abbrev. I ever use is 'tho' for 'though' because that is a considerable reduction. I never use any of the others. Typos not withstanding lol.

[Squiggoth]

Sorry, but using examples of "WoW" and "u" in the same sentence is just silly.

Yes, if I had to type out World of Warcraft (or International Business Machines, or International House of Pancakes, etc) every time, I'd go nuts with my fingers being too tired to do anything. So I say "WoW", "IBM", and "IHOP" because those are standard, SELF-used acronyms. Notice the word acronym. It's a shortening of a name using the letters in the name.

"u" is simply the letters "y" and "o" left off of you because the letter u, when said in English, is the same as the word "you" said in English.

But we don't write like we speak. We don't type like we speak.

To summarize:
International Business Machines = 30 letters including spaces
IBM = 3 letters

you = 3 letters
u = 1 letter

Come on. Don't give me that because someone isn't a native speaker of English they get a free pass on the bullcrap that is "u" "ur" and those kinds of ascii poisoning.

Acronyms are NOT what we are talking about here.

[Phate]

Colour is how it SHOULD be spelt.

Color is the bastardised American "version" of the word.
This is what happens when you let the "colonys" run themselves, start ruining our language *shakes fist angrily*

Colonies.

Also, I spell it properly, even though I'm from the US of A.