General discussion
-
Topic
-
About being well spoken… Do you or do you not agree?
LockedYou hear it all the time… “What poor English,” they say, or “Can these people write? do they know how to write?” then there are the lines… “Are they educated, where did you go to school, I’m appalled by the number of mistakes in your answers or questions” and the favorite one… “Do you know how to use spell check?” etc. the list just goes on and on about how some individual wrote their question or response, that it overshadows the purpose or message of what they are trying to get across in the post. Not all posts initially have the fundamental purpose of pointing out someone’s grammatical errors, but rather have the intent of trying to show or share other issues.
Yes I know its frustrating reading some of the strange writing with that unorthodox sentence structure and English wording, like these for example…
If YOUR going to the PC conference fill me in on what I miss.
I’m going to YOU’RE house after lunch.Both sentences we know are wrong. It should be…
If “YOU’RE” going to the PC conference fill me in on what I miss.
I’m going to “YOUR” house after lunch.Sure we can learn all the grammar tricks to help us show which one goes where.
One way is to just look for the roots in the words. “YOUR” has the words “YOU” and “OUR” in it, so we know it can show a possessive meaning to it, where “YOU’RE” is the condensed version of the words “YOU” and “ARE”, so we know it can show a directive meaning to it. Then we just analyze the sentence’s structure and what it is trying to convey.Other words may be more difficult such as… There, They’re, Their, There’re and The’re.
First… no one uses The’re any more, we simply substituted “There” for “The’re”.
“The’re” stood for “THE” and “ARE” with a word divisor separating them, which could be any word that was plural. Ex- THE suitcases ARE in the room… THE’RE in the room. We just dropped the ( ‘ ) and use THERE.
The same could be said for “THERE’RE”, which had been the condensed version of the words “THERE” and “ARE”, THERE ARE too many of them to count… THERE’RE too many of them to count. The ( ‘RE ) was dropped all together, and “THERE” had become the substitute for “THERE’RE”.We still use THERE, THEY’RE and THEIR, so how do we know which one goes where?
Find the two Main root words. THERE has the words “THE” and “HERE”, THE apples’ HERE… THERE’S the apple. HER can also be found in THERE, but remember… the two (Main) root words. Usually they’re found in the beginning and end of words not the middle.
We use “THEY’RE” which had been the condensed version of the words “THEY” and “ARE”, which we know it can show a directive meaning to it. THEY ARE in the pool house… THEY’RE in the pool house.
Finally… the word THEIR is possessive and implies a single individual or multiple individuals. How do we know this? We look at the two main root words “THE” and “HEIR”, It was THE HEIR John and his dog… It was John and THEIR dog. Again a word could be found in the middle “HE” but it is the first and last that are the main root words.
Anyways… How people write could be caused by many factors. Sure there is the possibility that they are uneducated, dyslexic, speak another mother tongue etc. or they could be in a rush with little time to spare. They could be more concerned about what they are asking or trying to convey, and not how they are writing. It could also be that it is a typo and they don’t write their post in a word processor like MS word or Word Perfect etc. and thus they cannot easily spell check it.
What ever the case may be… Just because someone can’t spell or their grammar is all wrong, doesn’t mean they are less intellectual… maybe careless, but being careless doesn’t make one less intelligent.
People should focus on what is being said, asked or conveyed, (That’s what Language was invented for) and not on how it is written… unless it can’t be understood.
Do you agree?
If I’m wrong… please explain why?P.S. Sorry for any Grammar or Spelling mistakes. 🙂