The Importance of Good Spelling and Grammar

I completely agree! It's not that hard to spell words properly and it makes it easier for everyone to understand.
One spelling i've never understood is the spelling of "liek". It's two letters switched around! It just looks incredibly stupid and makes the author look dumb.
An excellent article!!

Yes!!! YES!!!! I totally agree!!! Thank you for writing this article!

And I also hate the word "liek".....Hey kids.....



You look like a thicko if you write that....

Incredibly teacher-like, but very true! I check on Microsoft Word if I don't know how to spell a word; although I'm sometimes too confident and decide not to use it....


I first post a rough comment, then I read it through for spelling mistakes and last of all I check how other people will read it (e.g. are there any inside-jokes from other spots I have accidentally used in the message.

Anyway, I get also get annoyed when people don't even try to spell correctly .

THANK GOD!!! People who know where I'm coming from. I'm glad you agree...liek gets on my nerves too. I wanna nuke peeps at that point. I usually have my friend edit these things but this time I didn't at all :D

I agree too, but I live in Holland and sometimes I just don't know how to write a word, but I hate the word liek too, it makes the writer look stupid.

Major props for this! I completely agree!

Totally agree as well! You seem so immature with bad punctuation and spelling. But I went through a phase when I first got into IM where all I wrote were abbreviations. And then I started talking to a friend who wrote with PROPER ENGLISH and I felt so dumb.
Some people don't use spaces!
Iv-ceen-ppl-rite-liek-dis-in-commentz..
Do they honestly think it's cool?

It's about TIME someone wrote an article on this! I've found that there are SO many people in Fanpop whose grammar is SO poor, I can't understand what they're saying! That's just not right!

dramallama ftw 4eva n eva! jk... oops. Aaanyways... I completely agree with everything you said. I find myself losing respect for people all the time who don't feel the need to SPELL THINGS OUT. Thanks sooo much for writing this! :D

I put a lot of 'Lol's on my comments. In fact, I think I have put it in every comment! This soapbox has really opened my eyes...Thanks!

AHH!!!! Me feels so special. Thanks guys so much for reading this. I'm glad that you like it all :D

I agree 100%. It gets on my nerves when people misspell. When I'm on the internet I always use good grammar. Occasionally I'll start a sentence with lower case letters instead of capital letters, but that's it.

HOLY HOT DAMN I'm the featured Soapbox

Alright. I'll give you (and the commenters) the overall intention.

But, that whole 'liek' thang is not stupidity, it is usually just a fast typist. My own problem is 'the' coming out 'teh'

It is typing dyslexia. HA!

Seriously, when you are typing rapidly, sometimes your fingers hit the closest keys in the word rather than in the proper order. The human brain is set up to be able to read a word even when the letters are in the wrong order as long as it contains the right letters overall.

That means that when scanning the comment or post we do not always catch those snafus.

So yes, as far as Internet slang goes, that grates on my nerves also... but everyday typos? I read them fluently ;)

i agree about the typos, however, good grammar is good grammar. my dad's an english professor so i had rules like how to use a semicolon and the difference between "they're" "there" and "their" drummed into me from a young age. however, NOT having a parent who's an english professor is no excuse for bad grammar. my friends often get annoyed with me because i'm constantly correcting their pronounciation/grammar/use of words but honestly, you'd think by the time you hit 4th year of university you wouldn't need someone to correct you! one thing that really gets me is credible publications that are choc-full of misplaced apostrophes.
i do have one short-coming in that i tend to always write in lower case. still, i only do it on the internet so i tell myself it's not that bad.

random snippet: i actually have a t-shirt that says "Good Grammar is Sexy"

When I was teaching Crim & Psych, I used to eat English Prof's for breakfast ;)

One more thing... as someone already mentioned, not every member of Fanpop is from the USA. There is a huge portion of members from other countries.

oh dear, i hate to do this but.. there shouldn't be an apostrophe in "English Prof's" because it's a plural and not a possessive.. *cringes* please don't hate me :S.

LOL you guys rule, man!!!! I get the USA comment. I have a good friend who lives in Mexico, and he makes tonsa typos. Needless to say, but I don't really correct him at all.

I'm no Grammar/Language Nazi but it just irks me when people do not use proper punctuation, grammar and make spelling errors! Of course, some are not native speakers of the English language (just as I am) but hey, there are dictionaries, both the printed and online ones! Nobody has the perfect grammar (OK, some do... I hate them.. LOL, JK! :p) but there is Spell Check on virtually every website, so spelling typos should not exist!

OK, end of rant. Love the article!

Well put!!!

I have two things that annoy me in life, one is people who dislike coffee and give invalid reason and two, people who say "innit" and "u", its just simple words, come on people, use good grammer and spellings once in a while.

typing fast and little abbreviations are one thing, its just words like "luv", "lyke" and "sum1" that bug me...

I am not a native English speaker, but I have been studying it as a second language for 10 years, so I am quite good when it comes to English grammar and spelling.

I absolutely HATE misspellings and wrong grammar, wherever I see it. Sometimes I have to stop myself from commenting on some people's blogs just to correct the spelling errors!

I sometimes happen to write mysefl, teh, liek, etc, but I'm usually quick to fix that once I see it.

Good grammar and correct spelling is not only necessary to get other people's respect, but also for us foreigners who are not that much into the whole internet slang thing (I spent 4 months wondering what the heck ftw meant, before I finally asked someone for translation).

Great soapbox! I'm a stickler for good grammar and spelling. It's nice to see that not all of the younger set have left it by the wayside. :-)

there shouldn't be an apostrophe in "English Prof's" because it's a plural and not a possessive - unless, of course, I skipped a word in the sentence: such as: Eng. Prof's arguments... Another bad habit of mine, I'm afraid ;)

people who say "innit - that's dialect from the UK, not misspelling.

"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word." - Andrew Jackson

Good article. Now that I've said that I must admit I am an occasional user of OMG, LOL and some other slang and I do use spell check after most comments but it's when I feel confident that I don't, so I now apologize if you come across any of my comments that bother you. I hope though that your soapbox has helped alert others who are really bad for it.

Tttly agree w/ u... v.g article, tink dat g. splling n grammr is 2 imprtant 2 ignore.

Haha. No I agree, I've always felt the importance of good spelling and grammar and am constantly annoying others by pointing out their mistakes. The english language is a beautiful thing people, don't let it go to crap!

I try to use good spelling and grammar. It was so funny because I'm so used to reading text without any punctuation marks or capitals that I had to read a bit of text in English with no punctuation etc. and i read it perfectly. My teacher said "Oh, you read that well,........ but it's very difficult."

Off Topic:

I think ineeedcoffee is a fabulous user name!

Good article. I will admit to using internet slang such as LOL, but's about the extent of it. I think on an internet forum, using such slang is acceptable, but in the professional world, it definitely does not. However, bad grammar and bad spelling annoys me to no end. I know a lot of fanpop users are young and think it's "kewl 2 rite liek dis." However I think it also makes you look pretty ignorant, and other users do think less of your opinion and ideas because you cannot present them coherently . What kids don't realize is that when you go to work later on in life, people will google your name or google your e-mail address or other known aliases to get an indicator of how you interact with people or present yourself and your ideas. It definitely shows your level of professionalism. So the moral of the story? Change your e-mail address when you start applying for work! And for goodness sake, don't post pictures like this on the intertubes: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/fanpop-userrs/­lin­ks/­405­539­!!! :p

I HATE when people type, "your" and mean "you're." Do we need to go back to first grade? I try and tell people the right way, but they don't believe me! I almost refuse to believe that they actually believe that what they're typing is the right thing when they say things like that.

While I most certainly agree with the sentiments of this article, it is not written with fantastic grammar itself. For example, your second sentence is a sentence fragment. So as they say, practice what you preach...

you are right. i bearly understand that internet shit.. i use it, but not for every single word..thank you so much for posting this..
(if you noticed i tried to write as good as i can using periods and al that :P) lol..

This has always been a sore subject for me, but I ultimately gave up on trying to preach to people about it. No matter how much it would help everyone understand things better, or help their personal image, people will always use internet slang, bad grammar, and bad punctuation. AND they get ticked when you point it out because they feel like you're acting superior to them and you think they're stupid.

I'm just glad for every person who agrees and makes an effort to use good grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

i am not a native speaker(maybe people can guess from my username) and i am pretty sure that i make both spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes.but i have to say that it is usually not the real "mistakes" that i notice- but i see that a lot of people just type their comments and picks so carelessly. It is not so much the spellcheck they need to use( i dont know if I even have that in my pc for the english language)but it would suffice to just READ again what you wrote before actually posting it. And for everyone who likes to use slangwords and abbreviations: keep in mind that not everyone on the net speaks english so well that they understand slang- and thats the whole beauty of fanpop to connect with everyone not just people from your area or county..in my opinion anyway ;)

BOLLOX!

God bless you!

For number 1, it works on Safari as well.

Great article! I'm from the Netherlands, so English isn't my first language too (however it was my favorite and best subject in school). I always use Google Chrome and that has an excellent spelling checker. Sometimes I google slang words used here on Fanpop, so by now I know most of them too. Being active on Fanpop as a non-native can actually help you learn English grammar better! So everyone on Fanpop: Help your fellow, but foreign, Fanpoppers get better grades in English by not making grammar mistakes!

This Is LOL But True! Some Posts I Can't Understand! I Use Google Chrome Which Has A Good Spell Checker!

dont turn fanpop in 2 a school!!

I agree with correct grammar and spelling! Without it, so look dumb, and it's annoying when you can't understand what it means!

I completely agree with you. Sometimes my fingers type faster than my brain can handle, but I still try to use good grammar(if not my friend Roxas1314 gets on me about it)Anyway....don't you just hate spending ten minutes just trying to figure out a comment or question? I understand if they're from a different country, but please try and make it understandable!

I love this article. ;) Thank you for posting it :)

This is very true, however, I hate to be the one to point out you misused the word "farther" which applies to physical distance when you should have used "further"..... sorry had to be a grammar Nazi here.