there vs their vs they're

[Zagatto]

I'm so happy to find that I'm not the only person who hates how lazy people posting in forums have become. This is something that has been driving me crazy for quite some time. I find that I tend to lower my opinion of people who can't handle basic grammar issues when they post. I do allow more leeway for people who speak English as a second language but they are actually better at constructing sentances than most Americans (and some Canadians ;-P).

I would type more but I just got home from three days of training and I'm still hung over from last nights party (has any one here ever had to deal with a group of 40 kids while hung over... I don't recommend it).

[Sheky]

I like to add this to the mix.

http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

Heh, heh, heh.

[kakomu]

I think that comic refers to this:

last nights party

[Mantis421]

For all of us living in the USA and other English speaking countries we have gotten use to silent letters and other stuff in the syntax. Granted other Countries like Japan depending on your tone some words have different meanings. But most countries don't use the silent letteres or mutiple meanings for one work

[kakomu]

For all of us living in the USA and other English speaking countries we have gotten use to silent letters and other stuff in the syntax. Granted other Countries like Japan depending on your tone some words have different meanings. But most countries don't use the silent letteres or mutiple meanings for one work

That would be China, not Japan.

[Andromeda18_]

I'm so happy to find that I'm not the only person who hates how lazy people posting in forums have become. This is something that has been driving me crazy for quite some time. I find that I tend to lower my opinion of people who can't handle basic grammar issues when they post. I do allow more leeway for people who speak English as a second language but they are actually better at constructing sentances than most Americans (and some Canadians ;-P).

I speak for myself when I say that I'm careful about what I write because my teachers forced me to do so. My English teachers were British and although they were really nice people they were rather strict about grammar and spelling mistakes. Anyway, in order to pass my Cambridge exam I couldn't make any mistakes so I had to be really careful about that. However, I do understand why native speakers aren't as picky about it. I don't usually make any mistakes in Portuguese either but many Portuguese native speakers do. There's nothing wrong with writting "they're" instead of "their" once in a while but some people here do that all the time.

[kakomu]

There's nothing wrong with writting "they're" instead of "their" once in a while but some people here do that all the time.

it may be one thing to replace there for their, but using they're in place of there or their is TOTALLY inexcusable, since it's a contraction of they are. For instance, in the line I quoted, saying "they are's nothing wrong with writing" sounds totally wrong and not too hard to discern.

[Vicious]

I don't buy that whole 'It's my native language and I know it so well that I don't pay attention so I make mistakes in it'. You know what that means? You don't know it so well!!!! If you did, you wouldn't be making the mistakes. You can't even blame it on laziness. They're all about 5-6 letters long.

[Robojack]

Proofreading can be a person's best friend when writing. Spelling a word incorrectly or omitting a word can sometimes make a world of a difference.

This is meant for all you native English speakers, who have the nasty habit of either forgetting punctuation marks (making a sentence seem a paragraph long), or using net lingo in place of every other word they write.

If you're too lazy to proofread what you write, then it would be better if you didn't write at all. Better yet, simply wait until you are ready to write in a more legible fashion, and get your point across in a much more elegant manner.

Grammar >> j00! (Just kidding.)

[morgorath]

Look I am all for proof reading, but to say that we have such a great English Language is hypocrisy. The history of are language shows how much we have to learn. Take Lake Michigan for example. There were five different ways to spell the same lake. But we choose the spelling we use today even though it is not the spelling that the founders of the lake used. Why...

Oh and speaking of different languages... Why are we so back as backwards that we have to be so lazy as to have 3 different spellings for the same pronunciation of the word? So it is easier to understand what the author is referring to. That is bullshit. As a reader it is your job to interpret the author?s sentence. There for understanding the grammar. If we used one spelling of the word and used correct sentence structure we would need three spellings. Hell the Asian languages have been writing that way for centuries.

I digress Robojack and Kakomu are 100% correct I am talking about what if and how should be... The English language is what it is and we should proof read are posts. I have word open every time I post and 90% of the time use it.

[stevedave]

YEAH proof read god damn it ! I'm a dumbass but at least I still try.

[Nina182B]

The there/they're/their thing doesn't bother me. I might notice it but I quickly look over it. It's only when someone's grammar or typing is so bad that I can't understand it that I'll get annoyed, like those hard to read words because they're missing letters or have substitute letters.

[gubi-gubi]

Look I am all for proof reading, but to say that we have such a great English Language is hypocrisy. The history of are language shows how much we have to learn. Take Lake Michigan for example. There were five different ways to spell the same lake. But we choose the spelling we use today even though it is not the spelling that the founders of the lake used. Why...

In my English Language class I had a couple of years ago we got told there was like 4 different versions of English in Britain until the printing press got popular. Doesn?t Shakespeare even spell his own name different in his works?

[kristym22]

Has anyone ever been to a different website that you see people that add s to every single word. That is the only thing that is really bothersome to me. ^_^ :p