Am I going crazy, or has people's spelling gotten awful lately?

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

This is quite recent but I’ve been browsing Lemmy a bunch lately and quite often I see extreme grammatical errors.

I’m not talking about like, incorrect stylistic choices between commas and dashes, or an improper use of ellipses or missing commas or incorrect use of apostrophes in its/it’s or in multiple posessive articles or just plain typos or any nitpicky grammar nazi shit like that, but just basic spelling specifically.

It’s one thing when you can’t spell some pretty uncommon words and you’re too lazy to look it up and/or use autocorrect, but it’s a completely different league to misspell very basic words, very recently I saw someone spell “extreme” as “extream” which is just kind of baffling, I actually can’t even imagine how one would make such a mistake?

And it’s not been an isolated thing either, I’ve seen several instances like that lately.

Am I going crazy? Is it just me?

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Comments

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hedge_lord@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
A while ago I became terribly aware of people writing things like “apostrope’s” to indicate plurality. I was pretty convinced that it was a new thing, but I’ve since found examples of people doing that far in the past! I’m not sure if they were doing it at the same rate but they had been doing it for a while.

I know that some foreign language speakers use this as part of their grammar, but they do so according to a rule system. The people I encounter doing this have only ever known american english and do so without any apparent consistency. If you’re going to alter your grammar in that way, at least make it consistent! Like these weirdos. Professionals have standards.

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- Soku@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  That’s [Greengrocer’s apostrophe ](greengrocers apostrophe g.co/kgs/1gWQ9nT)
  
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aegis_sum@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I think there are a few things happening.

More and more individuals are contributing to the Internet through social media rather than simply consuming. They are bringing their (lack of) spelling and grammar with them, resulting in the variety of mistakes you’ve noticed.

At the same time I have noticed more and more mistakes appearing in “professional” publications. I don’t ever recall seeing a typo on an NPR website up until the past 1-2 years. Now I see grammatical and spelling mistakes almost everywhere.

I’m guessing it’s a combination of laying off editors and using AI.

But at the end of the day, if a language isn’t evolving, it’s dead.

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partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I know for me, I’m having more difficulty because of failing eyesight. If you can’t see the word you can’t perceive you’ve spelled it incorrectly.

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DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
it’s the mispeling vyrus

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Irelephant@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
There is a few words I cannot spell, and I’ve just given up on them at this point (definitely, infinitely, critisism ).

Sometimes I type too fast and post a comment with a typo, and a few times the edit fixing it didn’t federate.

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Thrawne@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Thats my secret cap, i’ve always had poor spelling

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BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Smart Technology has always been about removing our ability to effectively communicate with nuance and assess reality that’s what it’s for. Autocorrect so you can’t spell, google maps so you can’t find your way out of a paper bag without them. People’s lexicons have diminished, substantially since 2007. The quantity and variety of expressions used have dropped off majorly. All this connection with people all over the world and we use it to maintain quasi social relationships with people we hardly care about. It’s a joke.

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3dmvr@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I got perfect scores in english and grammar throughout highschool, passed the ap test, perfect scores on english portions of sap/act, passed the ap test. and didn’t do any english/writing courses in college. I technically learned english 2nd and didn’tunderstand it in kindergarden so my internal logic has always been that I’ve proven myself and I don’t need to spell or use grammar correctly anymore.

I’ve already proven objectively that I have a firm grasp on the english language, so now I just let the errors fly. The logic is terrible, but i’ll go with whatever justifies my actions lol. People used to make fun of how I speakx so Id show them my grades and ask them if they are sure that they are the one speaking English correctly.

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corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

[…] isolated thing either, I’ve seen […]

comma splice.

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boreengreen@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Spelling righte shows stranth of caracter.

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skankhunt42@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I’m guilty of all these. I’m dyslexic and have a hard time spelling. At some point the personal dictionary on my phone learns words and I don’t get the warning anymore.

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InfiniteHench@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Check out the English PhD motherfucker over here

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Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Just imagine you having to fix a thousand pages of this. I feel your pain.

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A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
i gut no ider wat ur tlakin bot. i splel prefect.

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null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Cashiers here have started saying “have a good rest of your day” instead of “have a good afternoon” or whatever.

It’s excruciating. It’s only emerged in the last few years.

I know language evolves and all but not like this.

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P00ptart@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Spelling? I’m not worried about spelling when it’s been acceptable to murder grammar in public for 20 years.

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Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
i typo a lot on mobile because small phone and i tap to text and not swipe gesture.

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- LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Typos aren’t what I was talking about, but your autocorrect should take care of it, at least on gboard. I also type everything on mobile. I don’t browse Lemmy on my desktop at all.
  
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  - Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    i typically do not have auto correct on because i tend to type on a lot of tech oriented sites which tend to have a lot of acronyms i dont want autocorrected.
    
    while typing this, i had to correct 3 words.
    
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WandowsVista@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
originally read the title as “people’s spending” so I uh… I guess we should add reading comprehension to the list of things people (me) are bad at

imo some of the drivers for today’s terrible grammar and spelling stem from a “rush to reply” e.g. people commenting “frist!”

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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Not sure about the trend but I know my absolute bottom tier skillz are language related. in school low grades in spelling, then grammar, then foreign language. At the end of college I swapped transcripts with a friend and his comment was something like. Wow you get pretty good grades, oh. except in spanish. Basically the only reason I stopped getting bad grades in something like spelling is that it stopped being a class.

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