The correct way to respond to misspelling and grammar

[Rion Atkinson]

This is in response to something that has happened to me recently. A few weeks ago a thread about the use of correct spelling and grammar was posted by Jane Young. (You can find it here.) This thread covered how it can affect the way you are viewed, along with your team.

What I do not recall it covering was how to address these issues as they pop up. Yes, mistakes are made regardless of where you post. I recently sent a message to someone asking about something they posted and got this in return.

Let me start by correcting several spelling errors in the quoted text:

....

If you ask this question, and do it with proper spelling and word use, I'll respond with my rationale.

Are simple spelling and grammar errors enough to refuse to answer someone? All I did was forget a letter here and there. "to do" was "to o", "yes" was "Yes". It was simple thing like this that caused him to refuse to answer.

So, let me ask a question to all who read this. What is the correct way to tell some one? And where is the line that says to correct them?

I personally would say the line is when the post is hard to read. I would then let the individual know via a message that the misspellings have made to hard to read and to ask him to possibly explain what he meant.

So what would everyone else on Chief Delphi do?

-Rion

(A slightly edited version of what I sent can be found here. )

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Formerly Famous

This is in response to something that has happened to me recently. A few weeks ago a thread about the use of correct spelling and grammar was posted by Jane Young. (You can find it here.) This thread covered how it can affect the way you are viewed, along with your team.

What I do not recall it covering was how to address these issues as they pop up. Yes, mistakes are made regardless of where you post. I recently sent a message to someone asking about something they posted and got this in return.




Is simple spelling and grammar errors enough to refuse to answer someone? All I did was forget a letter here and there. "to do" was "to o", "yes" was "Yes". It was simple thing like this that caused him to refuse to answer.

So, let me ask a question to all who read this. What is the correct way to tell some one? And where is the line that says to correct them?

I personally would say the line is when the post is hard to read. I would then let the individual know via a message that the misspellings have made to hard to read and to ask him to possibly explain what he meant.

So what would everyone else on Chief Delphi do?

-Rion

Are simple spelling and grammar errors enough to refuse to answer someone?

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Are simple spelling and grammar errors enough to refuse to answer someone?

To completely refuse? No. To me, that seems pretty arrogant, especially since, according to your quoted text from your PM, you seemed to be asking calmly and just looking for rationale.

You have a few spelling errors in this post too (not to criticize) but that doesn't really warrant a refusal to respond.

[Rion Atkinson]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Are simple spelling and grammar errors enough to refuse to answer someone?

Thank you kindly.

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

To completely refuse? No. To me, that seems pretty arrogant, especially since, according to your quoted text from your PM, you seemed to be asking calmly and just looking for rationale.

You have a few spelling errors in this post to (not to criticize) but that doesn't really warrant a refusal to respond.

Yeah. I made sure to sound calm and collected.

(The rule of CD never fails. When talking about spelling and grammar. You will mess up. )

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Formerly Famous

Thank you kindly.

(The rule of CD never fails. When talking about spelling and grammar. You will mess up. )

This is the quintessence of the problem.

We're all human, and we all make spelling and grammatical errors from time to time (I'm guilty of the is/are mistake in some of my posts). We should make every attempt to keep these mistakes to a minimum (Firefox has a built-in spell checker), but sometimes they elude are detection.

Everything here is viewable by the general public, but we're not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. We're not newspapers of record, and nor is the content written here sold to millions of people for consumption of news and entertainment. This is a forum designed to foster communications among participants of the FIRST community.

So yes, we should care about spelling and grammar, but we shouldn't let the zeal for absolute and obsessive perfection overtake our genuine purpose of inspiring students. Refusing to respond to a post due to spelling or grammatical errors is letting a personal vendetta get in the way of a actually helping them. Rather, we should kindly point out that proper spelling and grammar are essential to facilitate communications, while we also help them with whatever else they came here asking for.

[Adam Y.]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Are simple spelling and grammar errors enough to refuse to answer someone?

No. He was right the first time which is the reason why unless the errors are egregious you really should not complain.

[BrendanB]

Simple spelling errors are not something that should dissuade you from replying to a topic. If someone says, "Heeeyyy guyzz, i realy need help right nw!!!! Could you plz show me wher there are good diagrams/instructions stuff on cading!!!!! Any help would be AMAZING!!!! k thxz!" Then I would not respond. Just type the whole word and not use a "z" instead of an "s". And I'll admit that I'm not the best speller ever or use correct punctuation. Am I happy with that? No. It's something that I'm always learning everyday.

brendan

Just as a side note, CADing was the first thing that came to mind.

[BobC]

If people did not answer questions that I posted because of miss grammar or miss spelling half of my questions would NOT get answered.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by BobC

If people did not answer questions that were posted because of minor miss grammar or miss spelling half of the posted questions would NOT get answered.

Fixed that for ya.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Fixed that for ya.

An English major you are not.

[Dick Linn]

One can politely remonstrate the original poster for egregious errors or use a more graphic representation for those who learn visually:

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

An English major you are not.

Just to be clear, I wasn't correcting grammar I was changing what he said to be more general. If we all were snobs and didn't answer questions until they were perfect half the questions (my bet would be more than half).

Again, just a small joke. Hope BobC understood I was just making a little bit of humor.

[Mark McLeod]

I understand the twist in direction you were trying to make and I sympathize, but your joke was overshadowed by the grammatical destruction it wrought, and in a grammar thread it fell flat.

Ms. Spelling and Ms. Grammar would be quite upset.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Just to be clear, I wasn't correcting grammar I was changing what he said to be more general. If we all were snobs and didn't answer questions until they were perfect half the questions (my bet would be more than half).

Again, just a small joke. Hope BobC understood I was just making a little bit of humor.

It's all cool. We are not all rocket scientist and I think it is wrong if you know the answer to a question and you do not answer the question because of misspellings or wrong grammar you are wrong.

[Alivia]

Originally Posted by BobC

It's all cool. We are not all rocket scientist and I think it is wrong if you know the answer to a question and you do not answer the question because of misspellings or wrong grammar you are wrong.

I think that if you know the answer to a question, that means that you could understand the question that was asked (or in this case, written). This means that there was enough information given and grammar used that you know what was meant. I agree, in these instances, you should answer the question, and then maybe tack on at the end your thoughts the importance of grammar and how it would have been beneficial to all other CD-ers in reading the post. To refuse to answer a question that you know the answer to, purely based on grammatical errors, just seems juvenile to me, I guess.

Of course, this all changes if the effect of poor grammar and spelling/punctuation was so bad that you couldn't comprehend the post. In that case, a PM to the person should do the trick.