I often mangle the English language. I even misspell words regularly. Sometimes it is to prove a point, but most of the time, because I’m too lazy to spell check and reread what I post. But for the most part, I try to at least use words properly and in the correct context. When I see that someone has gone much further than I have with this, and taken it to a level of broken English as such that requires them to go back to grade school to understand what the hell they did wrong, I must speak out.
Especially when I find it among the IT/computer geek/hacker community. Only because I know how they rag on people in forums for such bad grammar and use of “1337 sPe@K”, I find it not only wrong for them to rag on others, but funny when I catch them doing it themselves.
In reference to this blog posts title, one such paragraph on someone elses blog caught my attention. Now, I have nothing against the author, nor do I even know him. It just seems that even he could have made a more coherent English sentence than he has on his one blog post.
Below is a copy and paste of his original post.
The first time I ever head of zipcars(www.zipcar.com) was from watch a ted podcast. I really loved to concept of car sharing and more importantly I really wanted to know how they handle the hand off of the car from one person to the next. Anyway I saw one today, I thought sense I lived in Atlanta I would never see one of these things. Here is the pic.
Here are my corrections:
I’m sorry, but there are a bunch misspelled words in that paragraph above as well as improper grammar.
Its “heard”, not “head”, that is unless you are receiving or giving head.
“was from watch a ted podcast” should have been maybe “watching” instead of watched, or better yet, “The first time I ever saw a Zipcar was while watching a Ted podcast.”
That is unless it was an audio podcast, then “heard” would have been fine, but you don’t “watch” an audio podcast by hearing. You “watch” by seeing.
“I really loved to concept of car sharing” maybe should have said,
“I really love the concept of car sharing”. Not “to” and not “loved”, as in past tense.
“I thought sense I lived in Atlanta” should have said, “since” instead of “sense”.
Thank you, this has been a spell check by your friendly neighborhood Spiderman.
Now, I know I sound like a pretentious snob, and maybe a bit of an ankle biting troll. I really don’t care though, as I have been awake over 24hours, had a bad day at work yesterday, and needed to find some way of venting my frustration. Even if only temporary short sightedness brings me to the conclusion that I sound like a total dick right now, it was worth the post.
I may have misspelled or even missued words in this post, but I at least made an attempt to fix them.