GameBanshee Forums

[QUOTE=Bloodstalker]Am I the only one who thought this thread would teach me some new profanity? [/QUOTE]lmao! I'm glad to know it wasn't just me
Though I attributed it to a lack of sleep

[QUOTE=Bloodstalker]Am I the only one who thought this thread would teach me some new profanity? [/QUOTE]


When I first read the thread name, my mind hit the gutter. I find this sad on two accounts, 1. I judge too quick, 2. I now think like BS.

[QUOTE=Weasel] When I first read the thread name, my mind hit the gutter. I find this sad on two accounts, 1. I judge too quick, 2. I now think like BS. [/QUOTE]


Most everything you say is BS anyway, it doesn't surprise me you think in the language as well

Yea, when I first read the title I immediately thought it was related to profanity, which is why I looked at it .

[QUOTE=Bloodstalker]Most everything you say is BS anyway, it doesn't surprise me you think in the language as well [/QUOTE]


I cannot deny the charges.

@rebel3_6_1, I would consider that not a sad reason but a good one.

[QUOTE=Bloodstalker]Am I the only one who thought this thread would teach me some new profanity? [/QUOTE]

You mean there are ones that you don't know ?!?!?

[QUOTE=lifeishell91]You do not have to use sophisticated language, just make the words simple, use correct grammer and spelling, but if you do not know the spelling of a word, say so that other readers do not misinterpret the word used. This way, the posts are legible.[/QUOTE]

I agree. Perhaps you could start by running your post through a spell-checker before posting, hmmm?

Well - there are a few problems - which others also have mentioned - with simply using a spell-checker.

If a word is used wrong but still spelled correctly (like sale instead of sail), a spell-checker will do nothing.

As for with grammar, that is normally one of the more difficult areas of languages. I often have problem even with danish grammar, and that is my native language. No way I can know all the points of english gramma as well, seeing as it is my second language. And the gramma tools in wordprocessers are often extreemly simple based on simple sentance syntax, and thus rather ineffective.

As others have said (and myself inclusive ealier) - it is not really a question of misspelling or poor grammar, especially on international boards where only a portion have english as primary/native language.

It is the question and the problem when people are lazy and uses SMS/IM/leet language instead of writing to the best of their abilities.

[QUOTE=Lost One]I don't think it's a big issue. Internet creates its own slang, that's what I think. And while it may be unpleasing to the eye, it is still a form of comprehensible language.[/QUOTE]

o rly? 1 b3G j00 2 d1F3r, d34R 51r.

Well - I could easily understand viscun, but I would agree it is not "comprehensible"

l337 sp34|< sux0r, iz dat cl34r - just to underline the point

I think that relying on a spellcheck is a poor idea. But, I do believe it can deal with at least a reasonable percentage of any errors, not to mention typos
I think it helps at any rate.
Plus, as has been discussed, there is the question of the various shortforms that are derived from text messaging and the like. This is usually a conscious decision, and I do think it is related to laziness. Is it really so difficult to type "are" as opposed to "R" ?

[QUOTE=Xandax]Well - I could easily understand viscun, but I would agree it is not "comprehensible"

l337 sp34|< sux0r, iz dat cl34r - just to underline the point [/QUOTE]

If a spell-checker is included, I demand it includes my name, as it is clearly the most misspelt word on the forums.

[QUOTE=Vicsun]If a spell-checker is included, I demand it includes my name, as it is clearly the most misspelt word on the forums. [/QUOTE]



Well- the c and s are often similar in danish, so that is likely the cause

It might be related to my own shortcomings, but I find long posts with only one paragraph and non-existant punctuation more difficult to read than posts with frequent spelling errors. Also I dont find l337 speak to be a significant problem here at SYM.

[QUOTE=Aegis]Well, misspelling is fine, as you said, every one does it from time to time. It's the blatant laziness that seems to bother a lot of people. A great example is the use of 'L337' language, or IMS chat language. Those are just plan obnoxious and annoying.[/QUOTE]

I am not bothered by typos and misspellings, since those very rarely makes it more difficult to understand the meaning of a sentence or paragraph. As is often demonstrated, the human mind has the ability to compensate for quite many language errors in a text, since we don't read every letter in a word, or even every word in a sentence, anyway. Instead, we use cues to recognise the written language.

Regarding L337 and other forms of slang, I don't think people use it because they are lazy, since it isn't really significantly faster to type. Rather, I think it's a way to identify yourself as belonging to a certain subculture. However, I don't think it should be used at a forum like SYM, where a majority of posters do not belong to, nor wish to belong to, the subcultures that use this particular slang.

Here at SYM, I don't find that misspelling and grammatical errors are the main factors in my assessment of the quality of a post. A good example of this is Delacroix if you remember him (sadly, I haven't seen him around for a long time) who is Brazilian and have Portugise as first language. His written English often contained many misspellings and grammatical errors, but the content of his post in serious discussions always held high quality since they contained well thought out reasoning. His knowledge as well as skills in discussion and reasoning were obvious regardless of errors, since these didn't change the meaning of the posts.

What annoys me more than the quality of the written language, is lack of reasoning skills and posts that, regardless of language skills, are off topic in serious discussions. In serious discussions, I by far prefer a post with heaps of errors if it contains valid points, than an elegantly written post which lacks actual arguments and fails to ever come to a point at all.

I worked for a little while on natural language translation for computers. We were trying to make a computer understand English. We were taking it VERY easy, assuming perfect punctuation, perfect grammer, and perfect spelling. It was still very difficult, because people understand things intuatively that computers simply cannot. For instance, the idea of the word "cool". The computer simply cannot comprehend the idea of the word "cool". And it REALLY couldn't understand why "cool" and "hot", in certain contexts, mean practically the same thing, whereas in other contexts, they mean complete opposites. Then there was the problem with the context itself. Now, a human being can easily place a sentence in context. But a computer can't. Short of hard-coding every context every sentence could be in, it was impossible to make a computer "learn" context.

What I'm trying to say is, we're writing this for people, not for machines. It's ok to use 1337 speak because we can put the numbers and symbols into context to derive meaning. It's even ok to be lazy, because let's face it, we can still understand what they're saying. What I personally find unacceptable, however, is bad paragraphing. If everything is jumbled into a single gigantic paragraph with no punctuation, then it is nearly impossible to read, even for a human, and can cause some serious eyestrain on the side.

[QUOTE=C Elegans]I am not bothered by typos and misspellings, since those very rarely makes it more difficult to understand the meaning of a sentence or paragraph. As is often demonstrated, the human mind has the ability to compensate for quite many language errors in a text, since we don't read every letter in a word, or even every word in a sentence, anyway. Instead, we use cues to recognise the written language.[/QUOTE]
Hehe... there was a study that came out about a year ago saying that if people saw the bging and end of a word then their mind would assume the words and make it for them, in fact they would keep reading and wouldn't even notice that the word was spelled wrong. I got an email about it from a friend and I read through the whole thing before I realized that most of the words were missing the "middle" parts.

[QUOTE=Ekental]Hehe... there was a study that came out about a year ago saying that if people saw the bging and end of a word then their mind would assume the words and make it for them, in fact they would keep reading and wouldn't even notice that the word was spelled wrong. I got an email about it from a friend and I read through the whole thing before I realized that most of the words were missing the "middle" parts.[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure that was an actual study as much as an "Internet" joke, so to speak. Almost everybody I know got the e-mail with the mixed up letters or read it somewhere on a Internet board, but I never saw any actual references to any studies (other then the vauge mention of Cambrigde)

Besides - you could "easily" read it dosen't mean you could have done so if you had to read through just a few pages of words in that manner.

@Opalescence:
It's ok to use 1337 speak because we can put the numbers and symbols into context to derive meaning. It's even ok to be lazy, because let's face it, we can still understand what they're saying.

It is not a matter of being able to derive the information as such. It is the matter if you have to spen a relative long time deriving the information just because somebody is to lazy to type "you" and uses "U" or "are" and types "R".
People posting in this manner are likely already sterotyped by the recipient, unless they do so in a place where everybody does. And if I hadn't been a nice moderator (hey - stop laughing everybody, I'm nice damit) - I would very likely simply ignore such posts, because I don't wish to spend prolonged time deriving it.
The person writing *has* to respect the people he wants to read his writing, and there is no respect in butchering a language due to lazyness.

[QUOTE=Xandax]It is not a matter of being able to derive the information as such. It is the matter if you have to spen a relative long time deriving the information just because somebody is to lazy to type "you" and uses "U" or "are" and types "R".
People posting in this manner are likely already sterotyped by the recipient, unless they do so in a place where everybody does. And if I hadn't been a nice moderator (hey - stop laughing everybody, I'm nice damit) - I would very likely simply ignore such posts, because I don't wish to spend prolonged time deriving it.
The person writing *has* to respect the people he wants to read his writing, and there is no respect in butchering a language due to lazyness.[/QUOTE]

This pretty much explains it. If people are going to substitute one letter for three, deliberately leave out words and add "in" expressions, all of which are aspects of a slang sub-culture, they have to expect that others not interested in slang are going to reject their posts as disrespect for the forum, or intended only for other slang users. That's the way it's always been with slang sub-cultures before the advent of computers, too-- such as the "cool" speech of the beat generation in the 1950s (which significantly was avoided by the literati of the group). It serves no actual purpose, except to identify friends, create a group sense, and keep non-users out. I'm not saying this in a pejorative sense, but as a statement of fact. As such, if a 1337 user wants a response from a non-user, it would probably raise their chances if they dropped the slang. But hey, not my choice.

[QUOTE=Xandax]Well - I could easily understand viscun, but I would agree it is not "comprehensible"

l337 sp34|< sux0r, iz dat cl34r - just to underline the point [/QUOTE]

I am guessing, with a bit of effort;

"Leet speak sucks, is that clear?" at least I like my interpretation

I admit my grammar often leaves much to be desired, my spelling (I think) is ok. Leet, or whatever the kids call it, I am sure is a language intending to exclude a large amount of people simply by its nature. But I do consider it a "kid's language" lol! If that sounds patronising, tough! As others have mentioned, spelling mistakes can be tolerated, especially when it is appreciated that English is not always the first language, but deliberate short hand efforts to "communicate" do not always "communicate".

<edit> I have a sister some 15 years younger than I am, and she has been inclined to send me a phone text message; "how r u sis?" *rolleyes*!!! Like I am going to enter into a text conversation, where I cannot bring myself to even exclude punctuation, never mind letters! I usually call her, the call would take ten minutes, the texting could take hours...