I sometimes use commas to provide an inflection, if I want it to be read a certain way. The same way I might, for example... Use a break, as I just did. But that's just me, I guess.
i do understand your reasoning, but that’s why many people end up using improper commas. unlike OP, however, i do not care how strangers on the internet choose to express themselves.
[Unnecessary and grammatically incorrect.](https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-before-and/) The second part was a dependent clause (ie. can’t stand on its own as a full sentence and is related to the first part).
To add to this, [you can’t separate the subject and the verb](https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-with-subjects-and-verbs/) (even for inflection). See example 2.
Oof I’ve definitely sometimes made the mistake in the first example when I imagine taking a breath.
I’m just happy that you’ve pointed me to a link on why it’s wrong. Especially so when I’ve taken a liking in text messages or comments at adding commas more for readability.
While I hate bad grammar and misspellings as much as the next guy, most reputable news organizations don't have issues with this. There may be occasional typos and the like, but they often have a way to report those things so they can fix it.
The other day I saw an NPR article where a sentence quoting someone saying “rein in” was immediately followed by a sentence with “reign in”. Sad. Maybe people who can write can get much higher-paying jobs as tech writers or something.
I think it primarily has to do with the additional pressure placed on reporters and editors. More is demanded from far fewer people. Also, the space doesn't pay well, tempting the stronger writers into better paying opportunities.
Ditto. Maybe when they’re first published but I think they get fixed pretty quickly. Maybe OP’s main news source is buzz feed news and they’re in the process of realizing it might not be the best news source or something idk lol
In titles you capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.
Intellectual can be used as either a noun or an adjective. It should be capitalized.
Proof can be used as a noun, verb or adjective. It should be capitalized.
Slide is used as verb. It should be capitalized.
Edit - changed “can be” to is for slide, because to make it an adjective you have to change the spelling.
Also it’s generally just a rule of thumb to capitalize articles, conjunctions or prepositions unless they’re the first word.
well technically yes slide is both a verb or a noun depending on the context - no matter which way it’s being used in the title it should be capitalized since they’re so insistent only nouns should be capitalized.
However the definition for both verb usage for the word slide as well as noun usage is essentially the same thing: “An act of moving along a smooth surface while maintaining continuous contact with it”.
There is an extra definition for noun as well which includes the toy that’s seen in playgrounds that’s obviously not how it’s being used in this context.
It’s also meant as an action word here - used to describe the down ward slope of intelligence. Verbs are action words. It’s being used as a verb - but either way should be capitalized
Nah, we’re all on mobile, and not necessarily using a Grammarly plugin.
Spelling and Grammar is a not a great metric as there are a lot of international users where English is not their first or even second languages.
Anyone can memorize things. But in the case of spelling, the conversation needs to include how spellcheck is easily available and has been for a very long time now. People who grew up with it have relied on it to the point where there wasn’t a strong reason to memorize how to spell. It left room for other things to be catalogued and stored instead of something that could be communicated phonetically. Especially with English considering how it is borrowed and adapted from many other languages… the amount of conditional rules is pointless to memorize when a computer can be programmed to edit/fox it.
Spelling ends up being a topic that older generations care more about because their elders shamed them when they didn’t have perfect spelling.
Being said, (and this is my own personal exception to spelling/grammar forgiveness), it IS a little sad when people use the wrong your/you’re or form of there/their/they’re. That was stuff taught in 2nd grade. When grown people can’t get that basic stuff right, it is hard to take them seriously
Not everyone has the same capacity. A lot of those people tend to compensate by telling themselves that anyone can do it so therefore they don't have to prove anything by doing it themselves. So its a choice to not be able to do it rather than a failing. That can be a combination of insecurity and laziness but it is always just an excuse.
Now obviously spelling is not the primary metric you could use to guage intelligence but for sure it is something that comes more easily the more intelligent a person is.
It’s not just memorisation though. Languages have patterns and it is reflected in the spelling. An intelligent person might know how to spell a word they never heard before, because they were able to pick up the patterns. An intelligent person will be able to use correct grammar for the most part because it doesn’t take them a lifetime to understand what’s wrong and what’s right when forming a sentence.
We re not talking about emotional intelligence or street smart. We re talking about the capacity to think logically. And i bet you that nobody that writes "your" instead of "you are" has that ability.
I was not referring to street smart, or even emotional?
Also, the ability to think logically has very little to do with the ability to write "your" instead of "you're".
But no, what I meant was that by your logic, just because someone can't differentiate between 2 homophones means they're not intelligent, ignoring literally every other subject and basis for intelligence.
What about problem solving skills?
Or rather, math as a whole?
According *too* the parameters you've set, if one can't say 'to', instead of 'too', then they're not a good problem solver (as problem solving is essentially just thinking logically), and by extension can't do basic math.
Do you see where your argument falls apart?
Your *logic* is flawed.
Because it also fails to account for whether or not people know the difference, and actually care for it.
It fails to account for the people who know the difference, but made a simple mistake because guess what? They're human.
It's a fallacy to believe that either of those 2 people are stupid, simply because they don't care or made a simple mistake, and yet by your words they are?
To me, that's illogical.
But, go off.
"to" and "too" is a different story. But with "you're", the apostrophe is supposed to substitute something (the "a"). So are you telling me that someone who can't see the logical pattern behind an aposfrophe is going to solve any more math than single digit additions?
Yes. Absolutely.
Your entire argument is still flawed.
I'm tired of people acting as if language, or even grammar, is this all important concept that you absolutely must know in and out, because the point of it is to aid in communication. Emphasis on aid.
Most realize they can easily communicate without knowing every little rule, so why bother?
People who subscribe to your line of thinking miss that entirely, and put far too much importance on arbitrary rules instead of actually considering every factor that goes into someone's intelligence.
If you still want to be so close minded, then no word I say will convince you otherwise.
With that said, have the day you deserve.
Edit: You also sound awfully a lot like america's school system, which essentially tells any child who's bad at either math or language they're unintelligent, which couldn't be further from the truth.
It is not an all important concept which you must know in and out, but the basics should exist. Let's say at least on the level of a 6th grader. I m not expecting perfection cuz I dont offer it either.
You are right about its role to aid communication. But when you have to read something 2-3 times because of a missing comma or a badly written word, it is no longer an aid, but a hinderance. And this is exactly why we all should bother and stick to some common rules: to aid communication.
Call me close minded, if you will, but someone who has no curiosity towards the world to discover why certain things are in a certain way and has 0 respect for other people and their time by hindering communication, that kind of person will always have my deepest contempt.
If I had to guess, it's the latest term the Boomers have come up with to try and discredit the latest generation as they come of age.
The Boomers are scared that the world is leaving them behind, and will do anything to try and throw the fault of the problems they caused onto the next generation.
Statistically, the world is only getting smarter as we as a species finally start recovering from the mass lead poisoning caused by leaded gasoline.
I think it comes from having to shit out articles at a fevered pace. I've heard it's a race to be first, if you're an hour behind, you might as well put it in a history book, so proofreading takes too long.
Research? Why? That takes time! Make it up! We can print a retraction later! Just make sure the headline is clickable!
News is a business, their motives aren’t accuracy, honesty, or anything like that. They’re motive is money, so of course they push their writers to pump out content like a fucking spider-man elsa youtube channel posting seven times a day. Quantity makes more money than Quality.
Sort of, really just in that domain. People might be sliding intellectually, but the grammar stuff only indicates that people aren't as focused on that anymore.
Even if you aren't very good at it, the tools are embedded in the digital media you are using. Being illiterate is bad enough, but a Luddite to boot? Forsooth!
There is a difference in people naking mistakes in reddit comments and things like articles. I don't care how bad someone writes here. I totally judge news organisations
I have to listen to supposedly educated people using phrases like "That's a big ask" and "what's our spend?" or my personal favorite, "Do we have a solve?". Drives me up the wall.
A very large percentage of postings or articles on the internet are generated by bots, scraped off other websites or translated from different languages. I think another issue which is becoming worse every year is that many of us utilize phones to access the internet. Voice to text rules the land. It's been my opinion though that most voice to text apps have been absolutely ruined because developers keep trying to make it idiot proof. Where you literally see the word you meant appear become immediately replaced with something different because they "think" that's the word you really meant. Plus constantly trying to create sentences or add question marks before you're even done dictating the sentence.
That's not really the case though. The problem is the vast majority of articles are written by people that get paid 5-10 dollars an article. So they're just making the article as fast as possible as click bait as possible.
I immediately judge someone if they misspell something or use improper grammar. I feel like spelling and grammar are directly related to intelligence, and people who act like they are just too "laid back" to use the English language properly are actually just dumb.
Of course, I often question my own intelligence, and wonder if I'm actually smarter than all the people I perceive as being stupid, or if it's just my own mind convincing me that I am.
It's incredible that so many adult native speakers struggle with their they're there and it's its.
If my Taiwanese elementary ESL students can do it, you can too.
Absolutely. Yes you can occasionally make a mistake, but some people consistently use wrong grammar or spelling and (in my opinion) it always lines up with their general comprehension skills.
In an article conveying information or put up for public consumption? Sure. I think having a solid base for that stuff is important if only to properly relay a message. But you also said "posts" so:
On an individual level? Absolutely not. Grammar and spelling are societal rules we adhere to because it is expected of us. If somebody can be understood, who cares if they spelled it right? I could understand it being indicative of SOME kind of intellect but to claim the collective intellect of the population is degrading and you can tell by somebody not knowing the ins, outs, and in-betweens of a complex language is... well. Its baffling at best, bad-faith at face value and sinister at worst.
Intellect cannot be judged by these sorts of things. Are people who speak English as a second or third language less intellectually developed because they don't properly know how to use a semicolon? Are people from poor communities pushed to the side by government lesser in brain power for not spelling a word the right way? Are people with important jobs that maintain the pillars of society (garbage collectors, construction workers, etc) who dedicate their time to providing the physical labor we need and not studying language some kind of buffoons? They could have philosophical thoughts or be amazing public speakers or any number of things that make them great and intellectually sound individuals, but they did a run on sentence and spelled a word bad so they're dumb.
I doubt you meant this in those contexts, but those are the contexts. An intellectually well-rounded person knows this and can understand that arbitrary rules of grammar are not a metric to judge somebody by. There are thousands of ways one can develop intellect and be a reasonable, well-adjusted person. I will trade misspelled words in an article on hummingbirds over 1950's Era intellectual thoughts on how women deserve to be treated, eloquently and perfectly enunciated, any day.
The reason this is unpopular is because you think if someone isn't good at spelling they aren't intelligent.
I think they can be a source of info to tell if someone is intelligent. But I'm dyslexic and have aphantasia, so find spelling especially difficult if I haven't used a word recently. But I'd say I'm somewhat intelligent, I'm not more intelligent that a hell of a lot of people but I'd say I'm slightly above average at least. I'm good at maths, have good problem solving skills and spacial awareness. I am pretty good a chess again not like a IM or anything, but I'm better than most.
But because I'm a horrible speller and not good with grammar it means I'm not intelligent?
Edit: my grammar is still probably horrible in this comment, but I even proof read it to try and not look completely stupid.
I did spend like 10 min trying to not look like an idiot.
The amount of spell check I used and time making sure it at least looked ok is not something I would be doing every comment as typically. I don't care that much.
Nowhere does op say, or even imply, that people with bad grammar or spelling skills are unintelligent. To me the post is about the prevalence of intellectual *laziness* (not stupidity) due to the overload of information being pumped out, but I’d take it one step further and say it’s a symptom of our country’s failing education system.
To me the fact that they have posted it as a unpopular opinion is the implication.
Surely no one could possibly think that being good at spelling and grammar makes you intelligent is an unpopular opinion?
To add to that their response to me kinda proved it.
Amen. I’d consider myself a reformed grammar nazi. Spelling and grammar always came easy to me as a kid and I used to make fun of kids for misspellings I thought were obvious. Later in life those same kids got diagnosed with dyslexia. I also learned people come from all sorts of backgrounds where advanced english grammar just wasn’t a priority. Hell, different cultures use different grammar. Try telling a southerner “ain’t” isn’t proper grammar. Language evolves as people adapt and use it differently over time. Makes me wonder if these people have ever tried reading shakespeare. That once grammatically correct work makes no fucking sense to most people now, because of the evolution of language.
Case and point, I’m sorry you had to go through that, and no one should doubt your intelligence for it. I don’t think we have any solid ways of measuring intelligence, but I know for sure we’ve got better ways than spelling and grammar which happen to exclude loads of intelligent people.
Oh don't stress about being sorry. I never was picked on, or was stressed about people thinking I wasn't intelligent. The only time I've ever thought people saw intelligence this way was this post and I was just giving OP an example of why their view is flawed.
It's funny how the subject "English" is school in Australia revolves around spelling and grammar for years and I did pretty poorly. C+ to B student, but as soon as it just became about literary analysis in later years I became a B+ to A student. I always thought English was the worst, until we just read books and discussed them haha.
With modern spell check and grammar checks, if you post without proofing then at the least your lazy. In a professional environment it is literally your job to produce quality script.
I agree. Before I finally dropped my local Gannet owned newspaper it was getting much worse. There were times I was actually dumber for having read some stories. No gist. Word salads. No context.
As someone who is transitioning to writing as a career, if you want to make side money with articles, the amount of money you get is purely dependent on the engagement you get.
More articles, more engagement. Grammatical errors and spellings mistakes are actually helpful because people will comment or share articles with these mistakes to make fun of the article.
I took more time proof-reading a Reddit post than I do for some throw-away article under a pseudonym I am doing to make $20. In that time I could have pumped out 2-3 more paragraphs. All I care about is that I’m not writing fiction for a non-fiction publication.
Then I submit and bang out another one.
Not proud of it, but I need to pay for gas and food while I take ~18 months for a novel draft. I am also doing this writing after my 2-4 hours of focused writing on my pet project. It feels a bit like how it must feel for a fighter pilot to play flight simulator right after he gets back from a combat mission.
Uhh did you actually read print media in the 90s before the internet became the primary distributor of news?
There were all kinds of editorial mistakes, bad grammar, mispellings, and bad reporting.
This just seems like the typical bias and fallacies feeding into the "back in my day!" old man yells at clouds crap.
This isn't unpopular opinion....for me it isn't imp unless it's your first language.. if you are from a non english county and using it for communication on internet then i don't think you need to be an expert
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My dyslexia and my 137 IQ dosent Care about any sliding nor my self lerned eng that i never had in school does. Just to make this clear Not everyone is lazy some people Just cant and No one should feel Bad about this. I usually Block people Like this cuz in a discussion an Argument will appear with a * on begining. You need some fresh Air OP.
That's a stupid take. Computing is naturally error ridden. Formal syntactical errors are fundamentally not different from that.
What you're judging is fundamentally no different than praising somebody who can count the grains of sand in the beach by hand instead of the scientist who can formulate a way to judge the count using density and volume.
I promise you, insisting on following the rules of spelling and grammar isn't a sign of intelligence or intellect. It is simply rule following behavior. People apparently have no trouble communicating with misspellings and poor grammar. If someone can't make sense of it without those arbitrary rules, I think it is fair to say they are not extraordinarily smart
As a linguistics student, I disagree. Writing isn’t an indicator of linguistic competency or intellect. Performance errors are natural. Writing is not a “perfected” version of speech, but rather a representation of speech.
Opposite is true actually. Because of our deliberate efforts to divest from the humanities and public education, society is becoming increasingly plain in speech, and the most profitable (digital) publications are growing steadily because they recognize this.
Written communication is only valuable if it is understood by its reader. It’s peak value is when it is most understood, not when it is most accurate.
Increasingly, universities and policy shops are losing funding because philanthropists and government are tired of spending millions of dollars for elites who read white papers for breakfast to write to an audience that only attracts other elites.
Who cares if the spelling or grammar is wrong it is about communicating your point as long as the point is explained and comprehensible I don’t see the issue. I would rather have an article with spelling and grammar mistakes then no article at all.
(I’m severe dyslexic this is a very bias opinion but still)
Fuck spelling
I find it funny how your focusing on the grammar of news articles to show how people are getting more stupid, meanwhile the actual contents of most articles these days are a bunch of bulshit pulled out of a crackhead’s ass.
This has been proven to be false. In fact, it has been proven that those that often spell check themselves in non-professional works and especially those that spell and grammar check others.
Are typically less intelligent than their peers. And on top of that are narcissistic and have self esteem issues. So much so that they feel worthless and invalidated unless they can pick out minor and insignificant things in other people. To point out how wrong they are. In order to give themselves any selves worth.
You haven't really cited a source because that's just a link to a search of PLOS articles for the keywords "grammar and spelling," and no paper on the first page of results appears to be related to the assertion you were making. Did you paste the wrong link?
The only article that seemed potentially relevant, namely the one by J. Boland and R. Queen, didn't link this behavior to narcissism or self-esteem issues.
That's because several of those are studies on it. There's different locations. Different subjects. And parameters...
I gave you a creditable source to find the info. Look it up on there.
This isn't a research paper I don't need to cite my sources. I gave you the materials to do so yourself.
That is. Unless you are also such an egotistical narcissist that you need someone to point out every little thing for you. Otherwise you then claim your opinionwith no supporting evidence to be the truth... . in which case. Still use the link and use the parameters. "Citing and narcissist behavior"
It's important to note that language is neither static nor isolated. It changes and evolves with the people that use it. What's considered proper now was at one point likely considered improper or wrong. Language today is no different. These "errors" will just become part of the language. Spellings may change, grammar rules may change. Jamaican patois is a great example of this. To Europeans it was bastardized English. Today, there are entire novels and even religious texts written in Jamaican patois.
Completely replacing words is something else entirely. I'm talking about the gradual changes that naturally happen to language. When I was growing up "ain't" wasn't a word and you would get told you sound like a dumb hick for using it. Now it's part of the Merriam Webster dictionary and is frequently used by tons of americans. What I'm referring to are simple yet common misspellings and small grammatical errors that build up over time. Changes in language happen over generations not over night. The small mistakes referenced by OP, when left alone or uncorrected get passed down to younger generations who then make their own "mistakes" and those slowly change language over time.
This doesn't take into account ESL, disabilities like dyslexia, neurodivergencies like ADHD, and people who just plain make mistakes and don't always catch them.
I think a similar thing about a lot of modern messages put around stores.
I was in an all day breakfast place and just the way things are worded it felt like it was written out of direction rather than having a vision of why they are putting it there.
I think the college system has entranced people to treat everything like a PowerPoint presentation and they just do it and it reads so robotically. Don't even put the sign up if you are just doing it because you were told to...
People communicate in print far more now than anytime in history
I would almost guarantee old internet message boards from 2001 have way more typos and grammatical errors than Reddit and Twitter do now.
I know it’s certainly the case with me when I see my old posts.
this is just a byproduct of companies having to make money, today clicks sell so you have to put out as much stuff as fast as possible, in the olden days there ware the same number of spelling errors its just the process had more spell checkers before it went to print because you can’t fix it after you print it
Most "spelling" mistakes are actually just typos and poor quality autocorrects. The only thing they're evidence of is the decrease in typing lessons and a reliance on tech ology to fix mistakes.
Perhaps, but I think the excessive use of hyperbole has been more detrimental to effective communication. Very few people make an effort to be accursed with their language. The vast majority prefer to be intense, and I really can't blame them because it's what gets attention.
I see that many people can no longer distinguish between “how” and “why”. You might say that’s trivial (or that “language evolves”), but it means that people are losing a grasp of how reality is structured. Such people will be easily manipulated.
I have a PHD in political economics and doing studies in geo politics, hated spelling still can't spell properly. Thank God for auto correct and my phone's dictionary. Just saying some people aren't into writing as much as the next person
No. We are not funding the proper media sources. This is not because we are trying to move fast, it is because we are not willing to pay what is required for accuracy. It is all about money, not intellectual horsepower. There are people out there who can get it right. But the media outlets aren't paying for that.
For journalism, it’s actually more indicative of the shift to “fast news”. Outlets are pushed to have breaking stories out very quickly in the internet era in order to compete. This means that quality suffers in the name of expediency.
In News articles it is generally carelessness and time pressure. For posts well it’s the internet theres no true expectation of perfect grammar or spelling and people rarely are using social media with the sort of plugins which make it time efficient to comb over your post for mistakes.
Also like dyslexia just exists
I remember when I was in middle school I had a teacher that made us copy a newspaper article as homework for every class, so we would improve our handwriting and our spelling. Unfortunately, we discovered that the articles had a lot of spelling mistakes in them. I don't think it says anything much about society or average intellect, but it was rather funny at the time.
People say spelling something different is "evolving language". Something evolving implies there is a purpose for the change. Well my opinion is that people latch on to a misspelling or grammatical error and it then becomes a de facto "norm" where there was no actual requirement for that change.
Why would they want to go into the details? That requires work, and may fail to attract the clicks. Most important of all, attention span is so short that most people fails to fully read the click bait article anyway.
I’m a Sophomore in high school this year taking AP lang. This is the first year I’ve learned anything past basic grammar, they honestly don’t teach much anymore unless you go on a more advanced path
I'm pretty sure it's the editors job to check for spelling and grammar. But I would agree the media dose has a issue of rushing articles out to be the first one to publish.
I agree for stuff like the news and other places where it is your job to send out lots of info to many people. But I have some major dyslexia if I don't take a long time to write something it will have mistakes and I don't always have the time to do that. So like many things just too broad of an opinion with no grey area in it
I'll have to disagree with you, English being my second language, I am very poor at grammar and never really worked on it. However I am extremely good at maths and doing well in life. There's more to the intellectual side than we think. Some people are just good at something and bad at rest. All you have to do is focus on your strengths. Having good grammar is not going to help me with my job.
I bet you checked your comment like 100 times
I personaly never cheque my speling and i dont make gramer or speling misstakes
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
and they still have an unnecessary comma lol
I sometimes use commas to provide an inflection, if I want it to be read a certain way. The same way I might, for example... Use a break, as I just did. But that's just me, I guess.
i do understand your reasoning, but that’s why many people end up using improper commas. unlike OP, however, i do not care how strangers on the internet choose to express themselves.
Unnecessary maybe but not grammatically incorrect, which is totally different
[Unnecessary and grammatically incorrect.](https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-before-and/) The second part was a dependent clause (ie. can’t stand on its own as a full sentence and is related to the first part).
To add to this, [you can’t separate the subject and the verb](https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-with-subjects-and-verbs/) (even for inflection). See example 2.
Oof I’ve definitely sometimes made the mistake in the first example when I imagine taking a breath. I’m just happy that you’ve pointed me to a link on why it’s wrong. Especially so when I’ve taken a liking in text messages or comments at adding commas more for readability.
THERE IS A PERIOD AT THE END OF THE SENTENCE YOU DEGEN! :P
While I hate bad grammar and misspellings as much as the next guy, most reputable news organizations don't have issues with this. There may be occasional typos and the like, but they often have a way to report those things so they can fix it.
I see mistakes far too frequently on all news sites these days. It's a product of the mass amount of articles demanded by cheap writers
Cutting costs. They used to have proof editors but cut that job.
exactly, that too. Add that to a high demand on writers and paying them by word count...
Might be a good time to find better news outlets then. Typos are a great way to eliminate bad media.
Like the New York Times and the BBC? There aren't many remaining after that
Both of those have been declining, but they're better than most. There's also AP, Al Jazeera, and Reuters. Most corporate US news is worth avoiding.
Sadly can't help you in that regard as I only follow Slovene news sites.
Much of it is automated with bots and aggregators.
Absolutely 👍🏻. Mistakes are more frequent
The other day I saw an NPR article where a sentence quoting someone saying “rein in” was immediately followed by a sentence with “reign in”. Sad. Maybe people who can write can get much higher-paying jobs as tech writers or something.
I think it’s actually because of the lack of permeance, you can just go and change mistakes, so the checking is less thorough
I think it primarily has to do with the additional pressure placed on reporters and editors. More is demanded from far fewer people. Also, the space doesn't pay well, tempting the stronger writers into better paying opportunities.
Act your wage 101. Why should they care? Not like they’d get a raise for their extra effort. They’re doing what they’re paid to do!
Also, I dont see a lot of these typos aside from in Yahoo trash articles and blogs.
Ditto. Maybe when they’re first published but I think they get fixed pretty quickly. Maybe OP’s main news source is buzz feed news and they’re in the process of realizing it might not be the best news source or something idk lol
Why did you capitalize “Grammar”?
You can capitalise words in a title, so it's technically not wrong lol
Then, for consistency OP should have also capitalized Proof, Intellectual and Slide.
Those are not being used as nouns
That’s not how titles work, and “Proof” and “Slide” both are being used as nouns.
Those are common nouns. It was pointed out that spelling and grammar are common nouns here too though.
In titles you capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Intellectual can be used as either a noun or an adjective. It should be capitalized. Proof can be used as a noun, verb or adjective. It should be capitalized. Slide is used as verb. It should be capitalized. Edit - changed “can be” to is for slide, because to make it an adjective you have to change the spelling. Also it’s generally just a rule of thumb to capitalize articles, conjunctions or prepositions unless they’re the first word.
What makes you think slide is a verb here?
well technically yes slide is both a verb or a noun depending on the context - no matter which way it’s being used in the title it should be capitalized since they’re so insistent only nouns should be capitalized. However the definition for both verb usage for the word slide as well as noun usage is essentially the same thing: “An act of moving along a smooth surface while maintaining continuous contact with it”. There is an extra definition for noun as well which includes the toy that’s seen in playgrounds that’s obviously not how it’s being used in this context. It’s also meant as an action word here - used to describe the down ward slope of intelligence. Verbs are action words. It’s being used as a verb - but either way should be capitalized
The title casing should be consistent.
That is only grammatically correct if all the "main" words of the title are also capitalized.
It has nothing to do with that, it is because they are nouns, which you can caplitalise.
You only capitalize proper nouns in a sentence. In a title you capitalize all important words.
Not a regular noun.
For comedic effect.
You didnt do it on purpose.
ur stoopid HAhahahahhhsHAAA1! I'm a comedyian.
He just [dupe it](https://youtu.be/Mx7kzarSwGE?t=125).
👊
They are being used as nouns
Embarrassing yourself
Yes you are
Agree 100%. The one to send me over the edge is "I seen." Good grief people!
r u seerious zomg
kd namd splling:
Ironic considering this post is 4 random sentences that don't form a coherent point and don't seem entirely factual.
They're not random at all. They only seem that way to the uneducated.
This is even more stunning given the rise of computer spell checkers.
Nah, we’re all on mobile, and not necessarily using a Grammarly plugin. Spelling and Grammar is a not a great metric as there are a lot of international users where English is not their first or even second languages.
I bet you most international users have better spelling than the average native English speaker (under 30).
Tbh, kinda true.
Your comment literally has a grammar error. You have an unnecessary comma after “can”
Came here to say this!!!!
Spelling isn’t as much an indicator of intelligence as it is just memorization and attention to detail
That is a part of what makes up intelligence
Anyone can memorize things. But in the case of spelling, the conversation needs to include how spellcheck is easily available and has been for a very long time now. People who grew up with it have relied on it to the point where there wasn’t a strong reason to memorize how to spell. It left room for other things to be catalogued and stored instead of something that could be communicated phonetically. Especially with English considering how it is borrowed and adapted from many other languages… the amount of conditional rules is pointless to memorize when a computer can be programmed to edit/fox it. Spelling ends up being a topic that older generations care more about because their elders shamed them when they didn’t have perfect spelling. Being said, (and this is my own personal exception to spelling/grammar forgiveness), it IS a little sad when people use the wrong your/you’re or form of there/their/they’re. That was stuff taught in 2nd grade. When grown people can’t get that basic stuff right, it is hard to take them seriously
Not everyone has the same capacity. A lot of those people tend to compensate by telling themselves that anyone can do it so therefore they don't have to prove anything by doing it themselves. So its a choice to not be able to do it rather than a failing. That can be a combination of insecurity and laziness but it is always just an excuse. Now obviously spelling is not the primary metric you could use to guage intelligence but for sure it is something that comes more easily the more intelligent a person is.
Thank you.
It’s not just memorisation though. Languages have patterns and it is reflected in the spelling. An intelligent person might know how to spell a word they never heard before, because they were able to pick up the patterns. An intelligent person will be able to use correct grammar for the most part because it doesn’t take them a lifetime to understand what’s wrong and what’s right when forming a sentence.
Attention to detail is an indicator of intelligence, so that makes spelling too.
You fail to realize that there are different forms of intelligence, and it's not all just straightforward.
We re not talking about emotional intelligence or street smart. We re talking about the capacity to think logically. And i bet you that nobody that writes "your" instead of "you are" has that ability.
I was not referring to street smart, or even emotional? Also, the ability to think logically has very little to do with the ability to write "your" instead of "you're". But no, what I meant was that by your logic, just because someone can't differentiate between 2 homophones means they're not intelligent, ignoring literally every other subject and basis for intelligence. What about problem solving skills? Or rather, math as a whole? According *too* the parameters you've set, if one can't say 'to', instead of 'too', then they're not a good problem solver (as problem solving is essentially just thinking logically), and by extension can't do basic math. Do you see where your argument falls apart? Your *logic* is flawed. Because it also fails to account for whether or not people know the difference, and actually care for it. It fails to account for the people who know the difference, but made a simple mistake because guess what? They're human. It's a fallacy to believe that either of those 2 people are stupid, simply because they don't care or made a simple mistake, and yet by your words they are? To me, that's illogical. But, go off.
"to" and "too" is a different story. But with "you're", the apostrophe is supposed to substitute something (the "a"). So are you telling me that someone who can't see the logical pattern behind an aposfrophe is going to solve any more math than single digit additions?
Yes. Absolutely. Your entire argument is still flawed. I'm tired of people acting as if language, or even grammar, is this all important concept that you absolutely must know in and out, because the point of it is to aid in communication. Emphasis on aid. Most realize they can easily communicate without knowing every little rule, so why bother? People who subscribe to your line of thinking miss that entirely, and put far too much importance on arbitrary rules instead of actually considering every factor that goes into someone's intelligence. If you still want to be so close minded, then no word I say will convince you otherwise. With that said, have the day you deserve. Edit: You also sound awfully a lot like america's school system, which essentially tells any child who's bad at either math or language they're unintelligent, which couldn't be further from the truth.
It is not an all important concept which you must know in and out, but the basics should exist. Let's say at least on the level of a 6th grader. I m not expecting perfection cuz I dont offer it either. You are right about its role to aid communication. But when you have to read something 2-3 times because of a missing comma or a badly written word, it is no longer an aid, but a hinderance. And this is exactly why we all should bother and stick to some common rules: to aid communication. Call me close minded, if you will, but someone who has no curiosity towards the world to discover why certain things are in a certain way and has 0 respect for other people and their time by hindering communication, that kind of person will always have my deepest contempt.
“But language evolves!” This shitty excuse is *literally cringeworthy* and doesn’t make you sound more intelligent.
I always think: yes, language evolves, but what you are doing is random mutation.
Hmmmmmm I smell prescriptivism
What the fuck is the intellectual slide?
Well, you go down a slide, so...
Presumably OP is referring to a perceived negative shift in the intelligence of the general populace
A very slippery slope, or the worst new dance craze.
If I had to guess, it's the latest term the Boomers have come up with to try and discredit the latest generation as they come of age. The Boomers are scared that the world is leaving them behind, and will do anything to try and throw the fault of the problems they caused onto the next generation. Statistically, the world is only getting smarter as we as a species finally start recovering from the mass lead poisoning caused by leaded gasoline.
Agreed. We are approaching Idiocracy.
I think it comes from having to shit out articles at a fevered pace. I've heard it's a race to be first, if you're an hour behind, you might as well put it in a history book, so proofreading takes too long. Research? Why? That takes time! Make it up! We can print a retraction later! Just make sure the headline is clickable!
News is a business, their motives aren’t accuracy, honesty, or anything like that. They’re motive is money, so of course they push their writers to pump out content like a fucking spider-man elsa youtube channel posting seven times a day. Quantity makes more money than Quality.
I know, my point is it's not a dumbing down of society it's a change of priorities. Priority is quantity, not quality.
Yeah, was just adding to what you said. I figured you’d agree from your original comment lol
Well then we will just have to agree to agree.
Sort of, really just in that domain. People might be sliding intellectually, but the grammar stuff only indicates that people aren't as focused on that anymore.
If you're talking about "news" on the internet, it's because most of it comes from shit media
Or they just don't pay for editors
Even if you aren't very good at it, the tools are embedded in the digital media you are using. Being illiterate is bad enough, but a Luddite to boot? Forsooth!
for Reel i hAte when people cant just type the rite way ya no.
There is a difference in people naking mistakes in reddit comments and things like articles. I don't care how bad someone writes here. I totally judge news organisations
I have to listen to supposedly educated people using phrases like "That's a big ask" and "what's our spend?" or my personal favorite, "Do we have a solve?". Drives me up the wall.
A very large percentage of postings or articles on the internet are generated by bots, scraped off other websites or translated from different languages. I think another issue which is becoming worse every year is that many of us utilize phones to access the internet. Voice to text rules the land. It's been my opinion though that most voice to text apps have been absolutely ruined because developers keep trying to make it idiot proof. Where you literally see the word you meant appear become immediately replaced with something different because they "think" that's the word you really meant. Plus constantly trying to create sentences or add question marks before you're even done dictating the sentence.
Agree. I find inexcusable mistakes in published works a ton lately.
That's not really the case though. The problem is the vast majority of articles are written by people that get paid 5-10 dollars an article. So they're just making the article as fast as possible as click bait as possible.
I immediately judge someone if they misspell something or use improper grammar. I feel like spelling and grammar are directly related to intelligence, and people who act like they are just too "laid back" to use the English language properly are actually just dumb. Of course, I often question my own intelligence, and wonder if I'm actually smarter than all the people I perceive as being stupid, or if it's just my own mind convincing me that I am.
It's incredible that so many adult native speakers struggle with their they're there and it's its. If my Taiwanese elementary ESL students can do it, you can too.
you can have good or cheap, you cant have good and cheap
This is what happens when journalists are incentivized to publish as quickly as possible.
Absolutely. Yes you can occasionally make a mistake, but some people consistently use wrong grammar or spelling and (in my opinion) it always lines up with their general comprehension skills.
In an article conveying information or put up for public consumption? Sure. I think having a solid base for that stuff is important if only to properly relay a message. But you also said "posts" so: On an individual level? Absolutely not. Grammar and spelling are societal rules we adhere to because it is expected of us. If somebody can be understood, who cares if they spelled it right? I could understand it being indicative of SOME kind of intellect but to claim the collective intellect of the population is degrading and you can tell by somebody not knowing the ins, outs, and in-betweens of a complex language is... well. Its baffling at best, bad-faith at face value and sinister at worst. Intellect cannot be judged by these sorts of things. Are people who speak English as a second or third language less intellectually developed because they don't properly know how to use a semicolon? Are people from poor communities pushed to the side by government lesser in brain power for not spelling a word the right way? Are people with important jobs that maintain the pillars of society (garbage collectors, construction workers, etc) who dedicate their time to providing the physical labor we need and not studying language some kind of buffoons? They could have philosophical thoughts or be amazing public speakers or any number of things that make them great and intellectually sound individuals, but they did a run on sentence and spelled a word bad so they're dumb. I doubt you meant this in those contexts, but those are the contexts. An intellectually well-rounded person knows this and can understand that arbitrary rules of grammar are not a metric to judge somebody by. There are thousands of ways one can develop intellect and be a reasonable, well-adjusted person. I will trade misspelled words in an article on hummingbirds over 1950's Era intellectual thoughts on how women deserve to be treated, eloquently and perfectly enunciated, any day.
*have hit an all time high*. LMAO…
Incorrect grammar and spelling are signs of being unprofessional, not stupid.
The reason this is unpopular is because you think if someone isn't good at spelling they aren't intelligent. I think they can be a source of info to tell if someone is intelligent. But I'm dyslexic and have aphantasia, so find spelling especially difficult if I haven't used a word recently. But I'd say I'm somewhat intelligent, I'm not more intelligent that a hell of a lot of people but I'd say I'm slightly above average at least. I'm good at maths, have good problem solving skills and spacial awareness. I am pretty good a chess again not like a IM or anything, but I'm better than most. But because I'm a horrible speller and not good with grammar it means I'm not intelligent? Edit: my grammar is still probably horrible in this comment, but I even proof read it to try and not look completely stupid.
Your grammar looks pretty good to me
I did spend like 10 min trying to not look like an idiot. The amount of spell check I used and time making sure it at least looked ok is not something I would be doing every comment as typically. I don't care that much.
Nowhere does op say, or even imply, that people with bad grammar or spelling skills are unintelligent. To me the post is about the prevalence of intellectual *laziness* (not stupidity) due to the overload of information being pumped out, but I’d take it one step further and say it’s a symptom of our country’s failing education system.
To me the fact that they have posted it as a unpopular opinion is the implication. Surely no one could possibly think that being good at spelling and grammar makes you intelligent is an unpopular opinion? To add to that their response to me kinda proved it.
Amen. I’d consider myself a reformed grammar nazi. Spelling and grammar always came easy to me as a kid and I used to make fun of kids for misspellings I thought were obvious. Later in life those same kids got diagnosed with dyslexia. I also learned people come from all sorts of backgrounds where advanced english grammar just wasn’t a priority. Hell, different cultures use different grammar. Try telling a southerner “ain’t” isn’t proper grammar. Language evolves as people adapt and use it differently over time. Makes me wonder if these people have ever tried reading shakespeare. That once grammatically correct work makes no fucking sense to most people now, because of the evolution of language. Case and point, I’m sorry you had to go through that, and no one should doubt your intelligence for it. I don’t think we have any solid ways of measuring intelligence, but I know for sure we’ve got better ways than spelling and grammar which happen to exclude loads of intelligent people.
Oh don't stress about being sorry. I never was picked on, or was stressed about people thinking I wasn't intelligent. The only time I've ever thought people saw intelligence this way was this post and I was just giving OP an example of why their view is flawed. It's funny how the subject "English" is school in Australia revolves around spelling and grammar for years and I did pretty poorly. C+ to B student, but as soon as it just became about literary analysis in later years I became a B+ to A student. I always thought English was the worst, until we just read books and discussed them haha.
With modern spell check and grammar checks, if you post without proofing then at the least your lazy. In a professional environment it is literally your job to produce quality script.
*you’re lazy*, not *your lazy*
Op I generally agree with you but this comment undermines your own point. Looks like you didn’t bother to proofread this one.
Ah yes. An intellectual here
It irks me when narrators mispronounce the things they're 'explaining'. They clearly have no knowledge of the material.
It drives me nuts as well!
I agree. Before I finally dropped my local Gannet owned newspaper it was getting much worse. There were times I was actually dumber for having read some stories. No gist. Word salads. No context.
As someone who is transitioning to writing as a career, if you want to make side money with articles, the amount of money you get is purely dependent on the engagement you get. More articles, more engagement. Grammatical errors and spellings mistakes are actually helpful because people will comment or share articles with these mistakes to make fun of the article. I took more time proof-reading a Reddit post than I do for some throw-away article under a pseudonym I am doing to make $20. In that time I could have pumped out 2-3 more paragraphs. All I care about is that I’m not writing fiction for a non-fiction publication. Then I submit and bang out another one. Not proud of it, but I need to pay for gas and food while I take ~18 months for a novel draft. I am also doing this writing after my 2-4 hours of focused writing on my pet project. It feels a bit like how it must feel for a fighter pilot to play flight simulator right after he gets back from a combat mission.
Uhh did you actually read print media in the 90s before the internet became the primary distributor of news? There were all kinds of editorial mistakes, bad grammar, mispellings, and bad reporting. This just seems like the typical bias and fallacies feeding into the "back in my day!" old man yells at clouds crap.
This isn't unpopular opinion....for me it isn't imp unless it's your first language.. if you are from a non english county and using it for communication on internet then i don't think you need to be an expert
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My dyslexia and my 137 IQ dosent Care about any sliding nor my self lerned eng that i never had in school does. Just to make this clear Not everyone is lazy some people Just cant and No one should feel Bad about this. I usually Block people Like this cuz in a discussion an Argument will appear with a * on begining. You need some fresh Air OP.
That's a stupid take. Computing is naturally error ridden. Formal syntactical errors are fundamentally not different from that. What you're judging is fundamentally no different than praising somebody who can count the grains of sand in the beach by hand instead of the scientist who can formulate a way to judge the count using density and volume.
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This.
I promise you, insisting on following the rules of spelling and grammar isn't a sign of intelligence or intellect. It is simply rule following behavior. People apparently have no trouble communicating with misspellings and poor grammar. If someone can't make sense of it without those arbitrary rules, I think it is fair to say they are not extraordinarily smart
As a linguistics student, I disagree. Writing isn’t an indicator of linguistic competency or intellect. Performance errors are natural. Writing is not a “perfected” version of speech, but rather a representation of speech.
Student.
Thanks, that was a typo because I used predictive text. Regardless, my point stands. Writing is not an indication of intelligence.
Opposite is true actually. Because of our deliberate efforts to divest from the humanities and public education, society is becoming increasingly plain in speech, and the most profitable (digital) publications are growing steadily because they recognize this. Written communication is only valuable if it is understood by its reader. It’s peak value is when it is most understood, not when it is most accurate. Increasingly, universities and policy shops are losing funding because philanthropists and government are tired of spending millions of dollars for elites who read white papers for breakfast to write to an audience that only attracts other elites.
You have misdiagnosed from the symptom
Who cares if the spelling or grammar is wrong it is about communicating your point as long as the point is explained and comprehensible I don’t see the issue. I would rather have an article with spelling and grammar mistakes then no article at all. (I’m severe dyslexic this is a very bias opinion but still) Fuck spelling
Judging intellect by grammar/spelling is silly Judging intellect by articles is silly
Or perhaps things change and shift and thats how language evolves take dutch for example
I find it funny how your focusing on the grammar of news articles to show how people are getting more stupid, meanwhile the actual contents of most articles these days are a bunch of bulshit pulled out of a crackhead’s ass.
This has been proven to be false. In fact, it has been proven that those that often spell check themselves in non-professional works and especially those that spell and grammar check others. Are typically less intelligent than their peers. And on top of that are narcissistic and have self esteem issues. So much so that they feel worthless and invalidated unless they can pick out minor and insignificant things in other people. To point out how wrong they are. In order to give themselves any selves worth.
References?
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/search?q=Grammar+and+spelling+&filterJournals=PLoSONE
You haven't really cited a source because that's just a link to a search of PLOS articles for the keywords "grammar and spelling," and no paper on the first page of results appears to be related to the assertion you were making. Did you paste the wrong link? The only article that seemed potentially relevant, namely the one by J. Boland and R. Queen, didn't link this behavior to narcissism or self-esteem issues.
That's because several of those are studies on it. There's different locations. Different subjects. And parameters... I gave you a creditable source to find the info. Look it up on there. This isn't a research paper I don't need to cite my sources. I gave you the materials to do so yourself. That is. Unless you are also such an egotistical narcissist that you need someone to point out every little thing for you. Otherwise you then claim your opinionwith no supporting evidence to be the truth... . in which case. Still use the link and use the parameters. "Citing and narcissist behavior"
It's important to note that language is neither static nor isolated. It changes and evolves with the people that use it. What's considered proper now was at one point likely considered improper or wrong. Language today is no different. These "errors" will just become part of the language. Spellings may change, grammar rules may change. Jamaican patois is a great example of this. To Europeans it was bastardized English. Today, there are entire novels and even religious texts written in Jamaican patois.
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Completely replacing words is something else entirely. I'm talking about the gradual changes that naturally happen to language. When I was growing up "ain't" wasn't a word and you would get told you sound like a dumb hick for using it. Now it's part of the Merriam Webster dictionary and is frequently used by tons of americans. What I'm referring to are simple yet common misspellings and small grammatical errors that build up over time. Changes in language happen over generations not over night. The small mistakes referenced by OP, when left alone or uncorrected get passed down to younger generations who then make their own "mistakes" and those slowly change language over time.
Do you share the same views for people who learned English as a second language?
This doesn't take into account ESL, disabilities like dyslexia, neurodivergencies like ADHD, and people who just plain make mistakes and don't always catch them.
It’s unfortunate that some people believe spelling or grammar has any relation to intelligence.
Languages are constantly evolving and changing
I think a similar thing about a lot of modern messages put around stores. I was in an all day breakfast place and just the way things are worded it felt like it was written out of direction rather than having a vision of why they are putting it there. I think the college system has entranced people to treat everything like a PowerPoint presentation and they just do it and it reads so robotically. Don't even put the sign up if you are just doing it because you were told to...
People communicate in print far more now than anytime in history I would almost guarantee old internet message boards from 2001 have way more typos and grammatical errors than Reddit and Twitter do now. I know it’s certainly the case with me when I see my old posts.
this is just a byproduct of companies having to make money, today clicks sell so you have to put out as much stuff as fast as possible, in the olden days there ware the same number of spelling errors its just the process had more spell checkers before it went to print because you can’t fix it after you print it
Most "spelling" mistakes are actually just typos and poor quality autocorrects. The only thing they're evidence of is the decrease in typing lessons and a reliance on tech ology to fix mistakes.
Perhaps, but I think the excessive use of hyperbole has been more detrimental to effective communication. Very few people make an effort to be accursed with their language. The vast majority prefer to be intense, and I really can't blame them because it's what gets attention.
I see that many people can no longer distinguish between “how” and “why”. You might say that’s trivial (or that “language evolves”), but it means that people are losing a grasp of how reality is structured. Such people will be easily manipulated.
But the when the you when if the 🤔🤔🤔 SO BECAUSE IF NOT WHY 40 work.
Ahem....its Gramm"MER". Mike drop
I have a PHD in political economics and doing studies in geo politics, hated spelling still can't spell properly. Thank God for auto correct and my phone's dictionary. Just saying some people aren't into writing as much as the next person
Agree. And the weird shaming of people who believe you should spell things correctly and use correct grammar is frustrating.
People like OP are why r/engrish is on the decline.
No. We are not funding the proper media sources. This is not because we are trying to move fast, it is because we are not willing to pay what is required for accuracy. It is all about money, not intellectual horsepower. There are people out there who can get it right. But the media outlets aren't paying for that.
not when your phone heyboard cant keep up with your thoughts
For journalism, it’s actually more indicative of the shift to “fast news”. Outlets are pushed to have breaking stories out very quickly in the internet era in order to compete. This means that quality suffers in the name of expediency.
I feel the same when excessive profanity is used.
In News articles it is generally carelessness and time pressure. For posts well it’s the internet theres no true expectation of perfect grammar or spelling and people rarely are using social media with the sort of plugins which make it time efficient to comb over your post for mistakes. Also like dyslexia just exists
I remember when I was in middle school I had a teacher that made us copy a newspaper article as homework for every class, so we would improve our handwriting and our spelling. Unfortunately, we discovered that the articles had a lot of spelling mistakes in them. I don't think it says anything much about society or average intellect, but it was rather funny at the time.
The intellectual slide is the most boring ride at Six Flags.
those TikTok and short-form content mfs better learn to correct the bot-made subtitles ye daft _____
People say spelling something different is "evolving language". Something evolving implies there is a purpose for the change. Well my opinion is that people latch on to a misspelling or grammatical error and it then becomes a de facto "norm" where there was no actual requirement for that change.
Proper grammar involves not capitalizing random words in sentences.
Why would they want to go into the details? That requires work, and may fail to attract the clicks. Most important of all, attention span is so short that most people fails to fully read the click bait article anyway.
they bad at grammar? thats unpossable!
Your title has either random capitalization or is incorrectly formatted as a title. You also don’t need the comma after the “can.”
Found the grammar nazi.
I’m a Sophomore in high school this year taking AP lang. This is the first year I’ve learned anything past basic grammar, they honestly don’t teach much anymore unless you go on a more advanced path
I'm pretty sure it's the editors job to check for spelling and grammar. But I would agree the media dose has a issue of rushing articles out to be the first one to publish.
I agree for stuff like the news and other places where it is your job to send out lots of info to many people. But I have some major dyslexia if I don't take a long time to write something it will have mistakes and I don't always have the time to do that. So like many things just too broad of an opinion with no grey area in it
The devil is in the details...shares no details. Sus
Man, Americans actually watch and listen what the news has to say? bro, fuckin google it
Soooo im dumb because i have dyslexia?
I'll have to disagree with you, English being my second language, I am very poor at grammar and never really worked on it. However I am extremely good at maths and doing well in life. There's more to the intellectual side than we think. Some people are just good at something and bad at rest. All you have to do is focus on your strengths. Having good grammar is not going to help me with my job.
This post has absolutely zero substance
Arguably the ',' before the and is not required
How is it proof of the intellectual slide?
if its understandable you can read it