u suk. ur stupid and ur mean cause u attack us 4 no reason
I'm not talking to you personally.
I'm talking about the lazy person that gets all riled up when someone says 'literacy'. The person who knows English yet still spells "know" as "no" to save time. The one who misspells every other word in a sentence, sees the little red lines in spell check that denotes the errors and then posts it without fixing. It's the attitude that grates on my nerves.
"Who cares, it's only the internet. It's not school."
Well, how you act when you're not in a school environment is going to be who you are as a person. If you don't give a flying fig about how you sound, it's going to show. That's like saying "I don't want to wear clothes because they're restrictive". Well, you wear them in public for many good reasons. If you suddenly started walking around in your undies scratching at your butt and farting out loud, people would take offense, right?
How about a compromise? Wear looser, more comfortable clothing, but for God's sake don't walk around with your bits showing. The same concept goes for the internet. A few LOL's, some 'hai thar' for kicks. But don't just throw everything out the window and then get angry when someone complains!
I run a forum that used to be quite active several years ago. It will have been around for a decade as of 2010 and we've seen many multicultural friends come and go. The people whose native language was not English spoke better than who we are talking about when we complain about "illiteracy" on forums.
Personally, I'm dyslexic. Trust me, if I left every single error in my fictional work or my posts in forums it would be a glaring example for me to use right here. But the point is, I care. I proof read. I try. And one can tell that I take some small amount of time to look over what I've "said" before I post it. People get so huffy when folks complain about illiteracy. I believe it gets taken as a personal attack because they think their skills aren't up to par. But when someone complains it's not an attack against anyone that has a good will and is trying to make sense. It's a rant against the chat speak, misspelled words and acronyms that are encouraging kids to be faster-faster-faster.
If you're on a forum you're there to type words and have people understand them so that they can type words back at you. If you do this in a way that folks can't understand you then you're doing it wrong. I'm not trying to nitpick or come across as the hated "Grammar Nazi", which I am not. But how easy would this to be to read if I spelled like I've seen people do on forums I frequent?
Example of above:
if u do this in a way that folks cant understand u then u doin it wrng i'm not tryin 2 nitpck or come across as grammar nazi cause im not. but hoe ez is this 2 read if i spellt lik ive sen ppl do on the forums i freqnt?
...I'm serious. I've seen things spelled this badly. And this is what we're talking about when we say 'holy shit, illiteracy'. This is not someone who doesn't know English. This is a lazy ass kid that doesn't care and is talking ghetto-internet speak. You're smarter than that, or so you say. Why should it be so much of a pain to show it?
Please understand us when we say illiterate. We are not talking about a single 'too' spelled 'to' in a post. We're talking about glaring mistakes that keep happening.
