Are all the people on 'Yahoo! Answers' illiterate?

It is not just you. I am not a native and I also find it annoying. Not that my English is perfect, but... they exagerate the "freedom" in their writings.

I don't know why it is so cool to show off one's ignorance. If they went to school, PROBABLY they learned something. It'd be nice to see they learned it, no?

Oh no! Someone has a sentence fragment!!! :D

Alas, it's true. Grammar is getting pretty bad these days, take away a 'spelling/grammar checker' and most people have absolutely no clue. Personally I hate bad grammar, to the point where I re-read anything i write, send, post, etc. 2, 3, 4 times.

That's not to say I'm entirely against a dynamic grammar; look back just 500 years ago at Shakespeare's work and whilst still bearing strong similarities to Modern English one can plainly see grammar has changed considerably. Go back a further 500 years and you start to have immense difficulty making any sense of it. English is a terrible language really, where vowels can possess almost arbitrary pronounciation. I'm not sure who wrote it (possibly Shaw) but it's been shown 'fish' can be spelled 'ghoti', the 'gh' from 'enough', the 'o' from women, and the 'ti' from any number of words ending in the suffix '-tion' (automation, for example). Add to that the fact that English is a heavy borrower from other languages and it comes as no surprise that spelling mistakes occur frequently - we do not have a strong writing system.

So yes, be annoyed (I know I get a bit that way when the writing is attrocious), but remember languages are not static - they evolve, add new words (Popemobile, internet, astronaut), drop others (crebrity, defedate, prandicle), change pronounciations, change spellings, and adapt to the current day. Hating change in a language is akin to hating the 'new sound'; there's nothing wrong with it, soon Duran Duran will be classical!

That said, some of us are just lazy; if what you've said has substance and can be understood, it's not the end of the world. And if I've made any errors, so be it - it's getting late :)

I sympathize completely. I often wonder how people can get to high school, or out into the world, without knowing the first thing about their own language. It's bad enough that most people here only speak one language, but to not speak ANY language well... It boggles the mind.

But, I have to tell you, you are fighting a losing battle. Speaking correctly is often taken as a NEGATIVE thing, if you can believe that. I agree that a little tolerance for misspellings and other errors is a good trait, but, seriously, many posts are difficult to understand, and occasionally are so messed up I cannot figure out what the person was trying to say or ask. A spelling check her is awl that is reek wired (heh, heh, heh) to ensure that no words are misspelled, but that won't help those who cannot construct a sentence.

There are two things .

!. People do not have patience and time . So they try to form a new and easy language .

2. Even if you commit mistakes , by repeated attempts only , people can improve their language .

P.S : English may not be the mother tongue of many contributors. I hope my answer does not frustrate you.!!

You're absolutely right. There are a huge amount of spelling and grammatical errors on the majority of message boards, but that is due to the internet being so freely available and standards of education being so varied. I certainly wouldn't have a pop at people for it, though.

BTW - Your rant should have read "somebody wrote A giant paragraph" rather than "THIS giant paragraph". "THIS" should only be used AFTER the first instance of mentioning something. ;-)

I'm not frustrated but, I'm disappointed. Not to the extent that you are, however. I really believe that writing is an indication of some measure of intelligence; in particular, train of thought and application of interpretation of the subject in written communication.

thanks

A link to the hundreds that feel the same way you do but i have a suggestion for you, don't expect literacy to improve anytime soon. With slang abbreviations Like LOL becoming more and more common everyday eventually the grammar that we know of will someday no longer exists

http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result;_ylt...

Eats shoots & leaves.

The book that raises "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation".

We can all learn how to spell better and take care in getting a clear message across. But alas, I am to blame as well for butchering the English language.

You should have written "getting 'their', 'there', and 'there' mixed up" because those are three separate expressions.

And I'm with Graham on the feeling superior rather than frustrated thing.

And to answer your question, no.

I agree, it is very annoying. Being Dutch I am sometimes very surprised at the terrible spelling mistakes (i.e. ceek instead of seek). It seems like a large part of the posters are semi-illiterates.