I keep seeing chance threads with spelling errors. Not just typos, but complete spelling errors or wrong word choice. Am I just getting old and cranky here, or is that kind of ridiculous? Can it be possible that kids want to be “excepted” to HYP but haven’t bothered to pay attention in English? Or is this that “it’s just the Internet, who cares about spelling, punctuation, paragraphs, grammar, etc” thing?
I’m with you. I was just reading another forum and a poster asked for a “mispriced” restaurant. Really? They got the name of the location that this restaurant was supposed to be wrong too. If I have to do that much guessing of what you are asking, I’m not attempting to answer the question.
I had an English teacher, back in the mid-70s, who would mark us down for each misspelled word. When someone complained, he told us that he would lose a whole letter grade for each misspelling. He once turned in a 15 page paper with the word “thier” in it five times, thus failing.
My kids 1) have spellcheck, and 2) get almost no feedback from their English teachers. Spellcheck encourages homophones (accepted, excepted) and writing only improves with mentoring. My D has overcome this mainly by writing a bunch outside of school. S1 and S2 are both, well, marginal at it.
^good point re homophones and spellcheck!
Don’t forget autocorrect. That can make for some real doozies!
Oh yes, it often changes Duke when I typo it into a pretty offensive word, which I have always thankfully caught!
And they are international but have 2300+ SAT scores. Seems fishy to me.
Eh, I’d give them a break. This is a message board, not a paper, and you can be smart and a good writer while being a subpar typist (see: me, for one).
I’m the parent of a child with a form of dyslexia that gave him basically no mental wiring for spelling. He would take standardized tests in K-12 and score in the high 90s percentage wise except for spelling and he would be in the 26th percentile for that, which was evidently the lowest score. He was editor of his high school paper and worked on his college paper for two years. Occasionally his peers didn’t catch his errors and some interesting writing ensued.
I got him diagnosed in the 8th grade on the advice of an academic team coach and it prevented him from having lowered grades in hs based on this issue. The academic team coach was a special ed teacher and reported to me that he spelled women as women in 7th grade. She knew there was a diagnosable problem. He managed to graduate as his high school’s distinguished student and magna cum laude from college. Also, made it through law school. Some people just miss the distribution when the spelling abilities are handed out. Through the years, I have heard of several people I know having the same deficiency. Two are physicians. Spell check doesn’t catch everything, but it certainly helps.
I tend to be fairly forgiving of autocorrect type mistakes. I have been caught many times by this myself. I do wonder about the international applicants who can’t seem to write a grammatically correct sentence yet want to go to MIT and the Ivies.
Accepted vs excepted, there, their, they’re, etc. are not usually incorrect because of autocorrect. But none of us are perfect.
But I still think that people should try to write the correct words whether ( not weather) it is a message board, email, paper or exam. Getting into bad or sloppy habits will come back to bite you in a place where it hurts. Re-reading your emails, messages, and certainly papers, resumes and cover letters, before sending is essential. But if you still do no know ( not no) when to use to vs too vs two, you may be in trouble.
I’m finding a lot of “your” for “you’re” lately.
The chance threads in general leave me scratching my head.
The common data sets give you much more concrete, reliable info than a bunch of strangers on a message board, many of whom are also high school students.
As to the rest-- I’m fine with typos. I certainly make at least my share of them myself.
I’m less tolerant of the posts without capital letters at the start of sentences, or huge blocks of text without a space. I tend to simply skip the post.
And the their/they’re, your/you’re, too/two/to, lose/loose, errors make me wonder.
As do the “30$” ones-- the dollar sign comes BEFORE the amount, not after it.
I can handle (some) of the misspellings but what astonishes me is when they misspell the name of the college they wish to attend.
I think people are being a bit too picky. I’m well educated, yet I make lots of typos. I think faster than I type and my fingers have a hard time keeping up. Most typos I catch, but some slip through. Sometimes they are even the basic your/you’re, to/too, etc. Yeah, I know the difference but my fingers screw up sometimes. This site is a little tough because if you don’t catch it in 15 minutes, its there forever. Other sites that I participate on allow editing of your own posts forever. As far as going back and proofreading posts to make sure they’re right, I do it, but not the way I proof other things I write.
I agree that the chance me threads are ridiculous anyway. If you are intelligent enough to go to a top school, you should be able to figure out your chances. I also like the ones that say “My gpa for two years is 3.5. How high can I get it by senior year?” If you can’t do that math, then you shouldn’t be going to college.
i can spell but i can’t capitalize, so chance me for nyu ed asap.
It depends on how much coffee I had because I read some of my posts it looks like Greek to me. I had no idea what I wrote. it didn’t help with autocorrection. But it does get worse as I age.
It is an anonymous board. People make up a persona, complete with fake test scores and personal histories. They enjoy their interactions seeking to get a rise out of the crowd.
Or could it be that virtually every poster here scored in the 99th percentile?
I have lots of typos bc I use iPad keyboard. So I get that, and autocorrect.
What are my chances for:
Berkly
Noter Dame
University of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (not a spelling error but a confused applicant)