Welcome to Gaia! ::

At my workplace, I'm the only person who can use a computer. This of course means that I do all the typing. It's a small forest park, so there's not too much. That doesn't bother me in the slightest.

What does bother me is the fact that no one else in the entire County Borough Council knows anything about our own language. I'll be the first to say that I don't know everything. Of course I don't. I do however have the basics.

Today, I could have (figuratively) cried when asked to 'quickly' check through for any mistakes in a document before printing it. The first sentence was over ninty five words long. It had no commas at all.. I won't torture you with the multitude of squiggly red/green lines that decorated the document. I won't go into greater detail, but you get the picture.

Does anyone else share my pain? I think that if I know others have the same problem, my pain will fade to a dull ache which I can live with.

I shouldn't say that I'm glad you share my pain. I'm not glad for that exactly. I wouldn't wish such agony on anyone. It's just a release to share it with someone who has been there.

What makes it worse is that this was written by someone who earns ten times more than I could dream of by torturing people like me with reports and documents like that! How did they manage to get jobs when they can't spell and wouldn't know a full stop if it punched them on the nose? (Believe me when I say I would love to do that punching thing.)

Young kids have started tho use 'chatspeek' in their schoolwork now. They still pass. This makes me want to weep. A whole new form of illiteracy.

gonk Oh...my...God! I hope she didn't use that in the exams or coursework! The exam board should be shot if she did...

Holy crap! If anything, that just means half the kids who used chat speak and passed are going to move on, get a job, and get fired for using it. :S

Time, I think, for a return to topic with another delightful incident! Yesterday, my boss was dictating an email to me. Before we sent it, he was trying to proofread through it. Note the word of importance in that last sentence - trying. I don't mind him making the attempt. Usually he just reads through it, tells me it's fine and then lets me send it. Yesterday though, he wanted to make a change. He specifically asked me to remove a question mark from the end of a question. The question was as follows. "Do you think any of this needs changing?" Referring to a document in an attachment.

After a few moments of trying to work out why for myself, I asked him in the vague hope that he had a reason. No such luck. He just didn't think it needed one. I couldn't find a polite way to say 'it's a question, you moron, of course it needs a question mark at the end of it.'

Since getting sacked isn't on my list of things to do, I managed to restrain myself. I took the question mark out when he was looking, but quickly replaced it before I hit 'send'.

Why can't people with poor spelling and grammar let people with some skill attempt to salvage what they can? I said in my first post that I don't know everything. I'm not stupid or arrogant. I have plenty of faults with my language skills. Probably some of you are sitting at your computers and wishing you could get out a red pen to correct me. I'm happy for you to do so! I'd be happy to get an email with any grammar and/or spelling mistakes pointed out, so long as it wasn't abusive.

Even with my many faults, I don't understand how someone can think a question doesn't need a question mark.

Are we all doomed? Are even our Gawds/GOdds (whichever) powerless to save us?

Ugh. I could cry. I think something like that is down to inadequate education, though.

I know a lot of people who write like they speak- not necassarily using text language, but bad grammar all the same, and since I live in the North East of England, that's not a good thing! I usually feel like buying them books like 'English Grammar for beginners' as christmas presents. Am I cruel?

Ok, that's good to know.