Judging the Intelligence of Others on Mylot

=p Now you have to know I have something to say on the one. *laughing* I can't spell, I try, hard, but my darn dyslexia gets in my way. IQ I have but somewhere in the wiring of my brain letters get scrambled or lost all together. You have never been anything be kind to me and you never fell to respond to my discussions that hold interest for you. So don't beat yourself up to badly over this. I guess because of my learning disability I am just naturally more forgiving of the written words. Doesn't mean that I don't think that those that are capable of using grammar and spelling shouldn't I do certainly do. If you have the ability to do something well and don't that is just laziness and take it form someone that would give their big toe to have that ability you shouldn't waste it. Okay I am rambling here...sorry*laughing*

English is not my first language, however, I read every thing I write one more time before sending it. I'm not too picky here on myLot when it comes to spelling. After all, there are a lot of crap being posted here everyday, so when I find a good discussion, I try to ignore the way in which it was written. Spelling mistake is very common, and I don't judge people on it even if english was there first language. What I care about most is the subject.

Well I'm pretty understanding when it comes to typos or minor misspellings. I usually try to make allowances for those where it's obvious English isn't their first language. That being said though I do have a tendency to skip over things that have a great deal of text speak in it. When I see things like "u" used repeatedly even in the small preview we get from the discussion page I have a tendency to not even open it up. I know it's my issue and perhaps I do miss out on some interesting discussions but it's something I cannot stand seeing when one is not using text messaging. So you are not alone in sometimes missing out on things because of being picky. I do it as well.

My fingers can't spell very well at all. I have a huge problem of mixing up letters when I ma typing. I do try to go back and fix them but there are always some that I miss. I don't let the way a discsussion was written stop me from responding if it is something I want to respond to. To me it is about the words and not the way they are typed. I have a hard enough time finding good discssions to respond to, that I don't want to limit myself any more than I already am becuase of all the spam discussions. With that said, if the topic interests me but I can't make heads or tails of what the person is actaully trying to say, then I move on. I think you have to realize that mylot is an internet site, that has users world wide, and it is not specifically for colleg graduates or professors. It is for average people to share their thoughts and opinions. It is also more laid back than if you were say, typing a letter to your boss. I think you probably are missing out on some great topics, but I also don't think it is the end of the world. You seem to do just fine, and in the end it really is a personal choice. You must do what you feel is right for you, not what others think you should do.

I have skipped over some topics because I didn't understand the English. I am not sure what country they were from. I make writing errors all the time, even after re-reading my posts. There are probably some not so eloquent topics that deserve more attention. I really don't want to judge anyone based on their writing skills. All people are intelligent to some degree. Because they might not present themselves very well in writing, is no reason to judge them. This is not that important of a medium to put people in boxes or classes. That is my feeling.

Some people are stupid and are unable to use proper spelling. Don't get on their case for it though, im not trying to flame you. As I do agree in some ways. People need to improve their typing, but this is a disscussion site. So messages are often typed quickly, and are not spell checked. Mylot is supposed to be like a place to lay back, relax, and talk. Now some topics can get a little over the top, but those are usually spammers. So you shouldn't pay them any mind, and go along with your post to the topic.

I think we all make spellings mistakes from time to time so I would not judge someone based on how many spelling mistakes they make in their discussion. I know a lot of people who never were good spellers, even when they were younger. Some people have learning disabilities that have to do with math, spelling and other subjects so we should be careful when saying things about how people spell things or can't do basic math or anything else. I do think a lot of people here probably rush when typing their topic, me included, or like you mentioned they may be spammers or they may not care. I do think we could miss out on very good discussions by ignoring discussions with spelling mistakes. I do not worry about the mistakes as long as I can understand what they are trying to say.

I think there are many users here who are intelligent but just find it difficult to express themselves in the english language. Their ideas maybe good but are not eloquently worded due to this limitation and a number are misunderstood for want of a better term or appropriate words to cloth their thoughts. You can see lots of these in the discussions with no responses. Typos and spelling errors are common and there are times when we just have to guess what the poster was trying to say. When one gets too picky about little things, he might end up hopping from one page to another and not be able to respond at all.

I dont judge anyone about how they talk or type you just have to do the best that you can. But why we are on the thing about mistyped words I have seen that evertone just about here on MyLot is miss spelling the word FAVORITE I always see it spelled FAVOURITE and I have found myself reading the discussion and the typing it the same way. Come on everybody there is no U in favorite.

It is not proper to be very judgmental. It is common among persons not to be excellent in English. Even English speaking ones are not keen enough in their grammar and spelling. For the good ones, most of the errors maybe typographical. Missed words, misspelled words, and grammar will get to be corrected fully if one goes through one's work with sufficient proofreading skills. You will learn later on, that to be able to fully achieve this, you will have to spend so much time on the corrections of the errors you have committed in your various discussions. This way, you will learn that you are able to post only very few each day, yet spend so much time with eyes gouged on the computer. It surely doesn't equate enough rewards for the effort generated. We are here just to communicate with friends rather than show people how good we are at our craft. No, I am not angered at all by your proposition. It's just that I want to tell you about the kind of attitude we must have as we go through this forum, per my perception of it. I could be wrong on this one, but that's how I see it to be, considering that so many who join here are finding it very difficult to be able to discuss ably in English. It is evident in the way they express their thoughts in writing.

I think that we all make mistakes, and sometimes a lot of the mispelling or netspeak comes from the teen population. If I can understand what they're writing about in their title and it's of interest, I'll still check it out even if the spelling is poor. I also think that you're extremely sweet to write a post like this admitting your own mistake. It takes a lot of guts to announce to everyone you were wrong.

I manage a website for a man who has trouble with spelling, grammar and punctuation. He wrote everything in uppercase with no punctuation whatsoever! It was very hard to read, so I had to fix everything he posted on his site. But, and there is a big "but" here, the man is a talented published poet! It's been a couple of years that I've helped him with his website and he is improving. I rarely see the uppercase going on and his spelling has improved drastically. In another case, I met a man who was very "down" on himself because since he was a child, everyone had told him that he was slow. Not exactly retarded or stupid, just slow. When he wrote something, he would go over and over what he had written just to make sure that there were no mistakes. The "but" here is that this man understood things that were 'way over my head! When he read a book, for instance, it would take him twice as long to read it than most people but when he finally finished it, he remembered every detail and could explain things in the book that I didn't even have a clue about. So I don't think that a person makes a lot of mistakes when they write are by any means stupid. The only bad thing about it is that a person who reads it is kind of tripped up when they get to the mistake. So it slows the flow of reading....

Forgive me, as I ramble a bit here... A few years back, I spent a weekend at a workshop that was basically all about understanding yourself through your natural temperament and personality types. One of the topics we talked about was "learning styles," and it surfaced the world has some VERY intelligent people who "think in pictures" and unfortunately "come across" as less intelligent because they struggle to bridge the gap between what they "see" and verbalizing those ideas. Which sort of gets to your question of how valid it is to judge someone's intelligence by the quality of their writing. In many ways, I totally get where you're coming from-- I'm a writer, copyeditor and periodic proofreader, and much of my life revolves around "judging" text... which also means I'm predisposed to dismiss something if it's poorly written. Non-English speakers aside, there IS often "quality content" in awkwardly phrased discussions. OK, if I actually have to re-read each sentence six times to make sense of it, then it's too garbled. But not everyone is an English major. And it's not fair for me to expect that. And I have to remind myself that I am NOT here to copyedit or proofread... whereas semantics can be important in a discussion, most discussions don't stand or fall on it. In a sense, now that I have "gotten over myself," part of the fun of a site like myLot (as opposed to "interest specific" forums) is the great diversity here. As I reflect on that, for a bit, I actually find it rather appealing that the single greatest base of members are from INDIA, not from the US.

I haven't been on this site long, but on other sites if they TyPe LiKe ThIs I'lL sKiP oVeR iT! Guess how long it took me to type that, why do people do that? I really wish there was a spell check here, I really do suck at spelling! I also will skip a post if the same person has oh about a billion posts in a row, that's so annoying! I don't think your being picky at all, you're just being human, we make a quick judgement before we spend out time on anything.

i dont really mind the spelling as long as i can comprehend what is he trying to say. i too misspelled and use wrong grammar for the reason that english is not my native language and because of this i understnad others and avoid to be judgemental. and no matter how bad his english as long as im interested in his topics no problem.

Well it takes a lot for a person to admit that they have been judgemental of others. I am glad you realized it before it was too late, and you missed out on a lot of good discussions. It just goes to show that you are a good person. I find your topics for discussion to be very interesting,and I like reading what you post. Take care and have fun.

I start out here on myLot ignoring those poorly worded discussions but then I realized I am English and I still have trouble with grammar. I have no second language and yet people on myLot type in a second language. That impresses me to no end. Once I realized this I stopped thinking about how bad their posts appear. I try to understand them and if I do and feel I want to respond I do. I have left a post or two explaining how they can BabelFish.com to type in their own language and then convert it to english so the will have a better idea of what to type in english.

I don't mind people who just have trouble spelling. I can usually make out what they're saying. However, when it comes to those who post ridiculous one sentence questions and they're not coherent - I can't stand that. I do understand that not everyone has English as a first language, but at least try and make the effort you know?

I have to admit I have done the same thing. It is hard to get past the misspellings and dropped words. The content may have been really interesting, but I never got that far. I do realize, just like you, that some here do not use English as their first language and I admire them because they do better than I would trying to type in their language. I have a friend who is extremely smart but can't spell a lick. I am going to try to be a little less critical and a little more open minded. Thanks for the insight.

I have to agree with you,lecanis,people should learn to spell & write properly, it is exremely annoying to try and figure out what someone is trying to say or explain something! I have a young daughter who is French, such as myself, and we communicate in Englis and her spelling is so bad that I can hardly understand anything! also, I find it very useful when I look at an investing program and the spelling is bad, then I know it`s a fake which has worked very good for me so far...