what do you think?????

On a side note, I'm old so it takes me more time to decipher what some posters are trying to say and I become distracted by all the misspellings, abbreviations and use of acronyms. I've also noticed that with the increasing use of emoji's, that it seems our world is reverting back to hieroglyphics. Did the ancient Egyptians have it right?

 

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Hey, I'm five years older than you, and I don't get distracted or confused by misspelled words, but I have had to decipher some of the abbreviations used by some of the more literate numismatists here. Early on I had to bookmark a list of definitions of them just to catch up with the more knowledgeable among you all.

 

On the importance of the use of commas, let me just put it this way: "Let's eat, Grandma" and "Let's eat Grandma" don't exactly mean the same thing...

 

I'm five years older than you. My maternal grandmother got me interested in crossword puzzles the year you were born. I guess that is why spelling has always been important to me.

 

As the saying goes, punctuation kills!

 

I have had to read a few posts multiple times before fully understanding the message and the majority of these posts have been of extreme length.

 

Fair enough. My challenge is that I'm highly dyslexic. It manifests itself in strings of numbers, letters in words and words in sentences. I often take a phone number down, over the phone, write it down incorrectly but read it back correctly. Try to figure that out. Worse is reading when I transpose words. I find myself reading the same sentence several times, trying to figure out what it means, then figure out which words I've transposed, then the sentence makes sense and I can move on. I don't think I've read more then 20 books, cover to cover, in my life (not counting comics). College was a real challenge but I developed a strategy. I had a way of finding out who earned "A's" in the classes I was taking next semester. I would go to the used book store, find their old book, buy it and read the highlights. Saved me both time and money. I only read 3 text books in all my college years, all in my major. Now on to coins..

 

"good English" (eye-roll)

 

And spelling has always been my top thing, too. I even won a classroom spelling contest when my best friend spelled tonight with an ite ending. I do watch it when I am writing, but I don't obsess over it in the writing of others. I'm not in school having to correct others, but when I was hiring for computer operator jobs, it was critical, and I turned down some people because of it. I also check when I am editing a book, because it's important there, too. Here, I don't care as long as I get the message.

 

Were you going for "whining" or "whinnying"?

 

And the same goes for apostrophes.

 

r

 

I have a suggestion, LETS TALK ABOUT COINS. Put your thesaurus on your desk, pick up a coin, look at it and tell us what you have. I do not give a rat's ass if your grammar is not up to some of our "apparent English masters", I just want to hear about your coins. (IF THIS IS GRAMATTICALY INCORRECT - T.S.) Lets talk coins.
Stay Safe
Semper Fi

 

Just to somewhat defend the opposite side, Professors, English teachers, proofreaders, and others, have an ingrained sense of correctness for the written language and find it difficult to let poor usage slide by. When I first joined CT, I too was a semi-language Nazi, but soon learned that if I could figure out what the poster what trying to say (within reason) I could overlook the mistakes made. Plus, as pointed out by others, English as a second language is always a possibility, so I lightened up.

 

Don't get me started on pronouns!

 

I totally understand what Mountain Man is stating, I too (or should that be a 2) was married to an English teacher and they have a very prominent place in society. HOWEVER, CT IS NOT ENGRISH 101. It is coins at various levels of interest and opinions. PLEASE LET'S STICK TO THE PURPOSE OF CT!!!

 

Slow down there Marine!

If everybody posting their disdain for improper English in this thread were to exercise their compunction for poor writing skills, this forum would be littered with grammar nazis. It isn't. This thread just gave us an outlet to vocalize our writing preferences.

It's all in good fun.

Carry on.

BTW, thank you for your service.

 

I dont care about the proper English. But I think it’s incredibly rude to post a private message that someone sent you.

 

I understand what you are saying, however, there are some amongst us that get far to carried away in their attempt to enlighten others on their mastery of the English language and their ability to properly form a structured sentence. True, some of this intended as good fun and that can be seen in their posting. I agree with bradgator2 that it was in extremely POOR taste to post a private message that was sent to you.
It has taken me years to rid myself of the hard line manners that I developed in the Corps, and I think back about some of the officers that would blatantly cut someone to the quick if per chance they had a southern drawl, or ethnic dialect. I made sure when I advanced in rank and I was in charge that I treated people as people no matter where they came from. Some of the "cuts" here remind me of those "superior" officers/enlisted.
Your Welcome, It was not all pleasant but I enjoyed my time in the Corps.
Semper Fi
Phil

 

I have been guilty in the past (and possibly in the future) of being snarky when correcting someone's English usage. However, one thing I would like to mention is when a poster isn't a native English speaker, we all really need to give them some slack or to correct them in a nice way.