Why can't people spell or use proper grammar?

Question

And don't even try to tell me that it's all typos - I'll only allow that for two or three words, depending on the length of the post - because I don't think that text message short-hand is accepted on college and job applications. Not all of you can be that incredibly stupid. wut? wat? whut? What? Their. They're. There. Here. Hear. Your. You're. Yore. agin. agan. again. exspeshaly. exspecilly. exspecially. especially. Now. Know. noe. no. do. doe. doen't. don't. dosent. doesn't. dosint. Could someone please clue me in? I know the difference. Why do I feel like the only one that does?

to whoever is between tmladenka and coldstream: How do you explain "whut"? Or "then" and :than"?

coldstream: *insert hurt look here* I went to public schools... I gradgimatated, too.

kefer39: I never said I was perfect - far from it, actually. That said, even you can't deny that the vast majority of these, for lack of a better term, "offenders" are between the ages of 13 and 30. I'm sorry - was that your argument I just shot down?

Noel L: Sorry, hon, I agree with you completely, but keeping with the subject of this debate, it's "lousy", not "louzy".

See? Even I know that it can be unintentional completely, but for those who still don't agree with me - look at the questions under the more teen-oriented categories.

P.S. I'm not judging anyone.

Answer 1

I feel the same way. And even if they can't spell, they have "Check Spelling" which they STILL won't use. Go figure.

Answer 2

Sorry smarty pants not everyone in the world is good at spelling and grammer. Those people who can't spell may be intelligent people maybe even science or math whizzes. Many are really bad typists and others just don't care. Some people also write on here as practice for a second language. So stop judging people, you know what they're saying. Spelling and grammer errors may be an annoyance to some but get over it. I personally take pride in my own spelling but i don't judge others!!

Answer 3

I have done yahoo answers after 4 glasses of wine!, and can STILL find the brain cells to back up and correct spelling errors, and use proper grammar. I am sure I have had many typos and some bad punctuation, but some of the questions I read, I just want to answer, only so I can tell them how annoying their illiterate question is! Its epidemic. This is what our government funded public education gets you. Which is why my kids are in private school.

Answer 4

I agree that it gets annoying sometimes. Some will blame the school system but I say that proper spelling and grammar should be reinforced at home. As for others, they just don't care. In their minds it's cool. I say it's being lazy.

Answer 5

some of those...words that u used are used to type faster by some, they figure, their message can be understood either way....and yeah maybe not everybody is a good speller, but we have to change the stereotype that bad speller are dumb....sometimes they are dyslexic...so take a hard look at the content of the brain...or the content of the messages rather than spazzing out on the spelling....

Answer 6

Oh my god... I think I am in love with you. Hehe, just kidding, but yeah, i totally agree with you. When i'm in my university english class, it seems that people use real english. However, on msn, everything is abbreviated and i have trouble talking to my friends and trying to distinguish what the hell they are saying. I.e. "tmr nyt bzy" like wow.. Tomorrow night busy.. it still doesn't make sense.

Answer 7

well, you aren't the only one that understands the difference. i do too and sometimes i'll admit it's frustrating, especially when i want to help that person :)

guess it's because yahoo answers allows people from all over the world to participate in asking, answering, voting etc. and that includes educated AND uneducated people--so we shouldn't get worked up against poor spellers unless they can't get the message across when we want to help them... :D

Answer 8

The dumbing down of the USA.
Louzy school systems, louzy parents, louzy study habits.

Answer 9

I have allways thought that humans creature s like you are. or. our. ar. oiur. r.>>>>>>>> WEIRD<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>> strange<<<<<<<<

Answer 10

EVERYONE FAULTS THE SCHOOL SYSTEM.
YET IT IS AN INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY.

YOU CAN TYPE, READ, WRITE YET THE AVERAGE SENIOR
IN HIGH SCHOOL HAS NEVER WRITTEN (HAND) A LETTER.
PEOPLE USE CALCULATOR-SPELL CHECK-COPY AND PASTE THEIR LIFE.

ACTUALLY, THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT BEING RIGHT.

THEY TYPE THE WAY THEY TALK.
ONE,TWO OR THREE LETTER WORDS.

IT WILL GET WORSE.
THESE PEOPLE HAVE AND WILL HAVE CHILDREN WHO
ONLY HEAR BLOG,YOUTUBE AND MYSPACE AT HOME.

Answer 11

No offense intended, but I disagree that you are not judging anyone. In fact, it's quite a common (read: incredibly widespread) practice today to judge people on their language use. We do it quite unconsciously but sometimes also consciously.

It seems like what you may really want to know is why there are differences in how people use language. Here are a few brief explanations:
1. People use language the way they do because it identifies them as a member of a certain group. You speak and write like the groups you want to be like. If the language of a certain group is incomprehensible to you, it's probably because you are not a member of that group.

2. Spelling is not exactly the same thing as our mental knowledge of our language but is somewhat external to our language knowledge. If you think about it, you know quite a bit of your language before you ever learn to read or spell. This is usually the case with children before they start school, for example. So, people who otherwise have excellent knowledge of the language occasionally don't use the "correct" spellings for words. After all "your" and "you're" are pronounced EXACTLY the same. In a way, it's a problem with the spelling system that it doesn't more closely match the pronunciation (this is a common complaint about English by learners of English, for example).

3. Grammar "rules" were created exactly to allow people to judge each other. Grammarians (those who create grammar rules) basically create a system where those who follow the rules have higher status than those who don't follow the rules. How closely you follow the rules might have a lot to do with how important the status you receive from the audience who subscribes to those rules is to you. If you think that people aren't using spelling and grammar to your standards, chances are they don't care about your opinion; if they wanted your approval, they would follow your rules.
Most of the grammar rules that people cite today were created in the 1700s, and they are quite arbitrary. They usually prohibit things that have existed in English much longer than the rule. Many people who use such rules claim that they make communication smoother and better, but there are very few instances where such rules actually improve communication -- if people thought they needed better communication they would just do it, without needing rules to tell them how to do it.
The thing that the grammarians didn't realize is that we already judge each other's language all the time, although we do it unconsciously, so their rules weren't really necessary. In fact, I think that grammar rules greatly underestimate the savvy of everyday users of language who have an incredible capacity to navigate the social systems we encounter regularly in our lives. In many cases, following the grammar rule actually restricts the subtlety of our expression.

You have mixed examples from different situations into your answer, so I am concerned that you might not be aware that they actually represent different issues. I was actually pleasantly surprised by your question because usually when people ask questions like this on Yahoo! Answers, the question itself contains spelling or grammar mistakes. The only questionable part of your question is the hyphen you put in "short-hand", which is not that big of a deal. So at least you aren't completely hypocritical. But, in a way, that's the exact problem, because many people don't realize that judging people on their language is actually judging people. In fact, when we decide that a certain kind of language is bad, it's not because of the language itself, but the group of people that language is associated with. The classic example is the perpetual debate over AAVE (African-American Vernacular English, also known as Ebonics), where many people see this dialect as a "degraded" form of English, when in actuality it is a completely viable dialect and actually contains at least one grammatical structure that is superior in precision to standard English. It's not the dialect itself that people don't like, but the fact that black people speak it. But their racism washes over onto the language, so we think it's okay to judge that, because when you're judging a dialect it seems like you aren't judging people. This is why one linguist has called linguistic discrimination the last acceptable form of discrimination.

So, please tread lightly on questions like this. I would hope that you are not guilty of discrimination, and the more you study the more you will discover that everyday people are amazingly capable of keeping track of and manipulating all kinds of minute cognitively demanding details when going about their everyday language practices. One of my professors once compared people who think that language isn't interesting to people who say, "I already know all about Cell Biology. In fact, I'm doing it right now." The everyday language behavior of regular people is intricate and very patterned, not a random set of approximations and mistakes. It certainly gives people like me lots of work to do!