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Spelling doesn’t matter, as long as the other person gets what you’re talking about.

Kids these days.  Spelling doesn’t matter, as long as the other person gets what you’re talking about.  If you don’t believe me, just ask my 17 year old son, he’ll tell you all about it.

Admittedly, I don’t think kids should be graded harshly for grammatical or spelling errors on math papers, computer program comments (I actually had a teacher that took off points for not having complete sentences in the comments for a program), physics, art, etc.  Now all bets are off when it comes to English class, because that’s what it is all about.

However, if you publish a game, write a paper about your physics experiments or create anything that is made for general population I would suggest making sure your grammar is correct in the final product.  Trust me, it’s tough for me and I’m just waiting for someone to point out a mistake on this post.

Prime examples of when it is important to use correct grammar:

  1. When you are trying to make a point or trying to sound intelligent.  See
    http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=274685879861 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=260098416437
    and the list goes on I’m sure.  In fact I had great fun pointing that error out to my son when he joined the group “Parents call it talking back, we call it telling them there wrong”.
  2. When you are trying to sell something.  This is what originally prompted this post and I want to make it clear I have *nothing* against these guys or their site (notice I used the correct version there).  I was reading about Blue Collar Bobbers when I ran across this quote. “and ride into the sunset with there comrades”.  Now for some reason, this just glares at me.  Maybe it because I’ve struggled with it myself so I’m hypersensitive to the use of “there, they’re and their”.  Does that mean I won’t buy from them? No, but it does give a certain impression of the type of people running the store.  I’m also going to make the assumption that, based off of the design, they didn’t do the work themselves.  Chances are someone just wasn’t fully awake and didn’t catch the typo, let’s hope so because I’d hate to be paying someone for a finished product that wasn’t correct.

So, having said all that, I would suggest a remedial course.  If you don’t want to do that, how about spending a little time to get it straight in your head in whatever manner works best for you.  There’s even web sites out there to help.  I googled “there their they’re” and the top hit was a wikihow page, how convenient!

Up next is a rant about “you’re, your and yore”… no, not really, but I’m sure there are plenty of examples of that as well.

–servergoon

By Mark

I work in IT and ride Motorcycles. I do one to support the other.