Is it my imagination or can't americans form simple sentences? And what about their spelling? Come on!!?

Question

The ones that get me the most are the uses of "than" and "then".
Examples: The earth is bigger then the moon.
I going to the grocery store than the video store.
I am american.

Answer 1

well our education system is pretty disastrous, so this might be the reason. I mean, I know my high school failed me big time, because when I got to college, I had such a hard time adjusting.

Answer 2

I think many English-speaking people are losing their grasp of the language, especially written but spoken as well.

I think this is due to reliance on the spell check feature of many computer programs, which lets things like "than" replace "then," because they are both recognized by the machine. Computers also recognize many other words in the wrong place ("well" for "will," "don't" in a double negative, etc.) which then fill papers with errors.
Again, the machines will let recognized words go by without capitalization if there is any instance at all where it can be accepted as such.

Students and other writers must learn to proofread their work, not just rely on a machine.

The poor sentences are also due to sloppy writing, because few take the time to reread, much less look up the meaning and even etymology of a word in order to know it in full. There has been poor training with regard to writing, especially in the lower levels.

I believe this is due to over-crowding in classrooms and low pay for teachers, two things which have lead to the "dumbing down" of written English and probably spoken English as well.

Votes for better schooling are often hidden in the wording I call 'ballot-speak' for other agendas, and so are read without proper understanding (as are many of the increasingly convoluted measures on a ballot) and are then not properly voted on to represent the people's wishes.

PS. I'm sure you already know that your examples needed work as well. (small lol) ;-}

Answer 3

Actually it's "Do people who can't spell or form a simple sentence navigate to this forum by accident or on purpose?" I blame people texting too much. When they text they use stupid abbreviations instead of entire words so they can do it faster.

Answer 4

people tend to misspell words on the internet because they don't check what they have typed. some are skipping letters because there isn't enough space. some are just plain horrible spellers and terrible at grammar. i've seen people spell which like witch a couple dozen times. there are some sentences on answers that defy understanding cause they're so badly formed.

Answer 5

At least Americans know that proper nouns, like "Americans," are capitalized in the English language. You might want to work on the punctuation a bit, too.

Answer 6

"And what about their spelling?" This isn't even a sentence, simple or otherwise. It's a fragment. The "then-than" comparison isn't even a question of spelling; the words are correctly spelled. It's a question of correct grammatical use. I suggest you clean up your own act before you criticize others.

Answer 7

I'm sorry your hate for Americans has led to asking irrational questions.

I hope you get better someday!

Answer 8

Well here's a good one for you is it...?

Is it my imagination or can't Americans form simple sentences?

or

Is it my imagination or Americans can't form simple sentences?

Answer 9

Starting a question with "And"???
The proper noun, "Americans" should be capitalized.
Case closed.

Answer 10

I'm bored with these endless 'comparison' questions.
No nationality is perfect. Accept it.