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pensieve
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19 Jan 2011, 3:53 am

I've struggled with poor spelling my whole life. I'm doing better now especially with the auto spell checker but I still thinks it's cruel when someone that genuinely has dyslexia or even ADHD gets targeted for their poor spelling.
I was even going to go this whole month not to correct a single spelling mistake but it was too hard. People make fun of you too much.
I hate how they assume they're trolls too. It's so easy to pick out a troll too. It's about context not spelling.


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19 Jan 2011, 8:20 pm

Ah, pensieve, you hit right where it hurts. For me, grammar and spelling and foreign languages on the whole (because English is not a native language for me) are areas of special interest.
I simply can't help myself. I do try but I have a history of faux pas in this area, and, what is even worse, I've hurt fellow spectrumites.
:wall:



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19 Jan 2011, 8:31 pm

jmnixon95 wrote:
:roll:
Having HFA or Asperger's Syndrome does not impair your ability to understand basic spelling and grammar. Conditions like dyslexia can coexist with autism. The higher-functioning autism in itself does not make one unwilling/unable to read a grammar textbook, so I ask that you do not say 'many autistic people have bad grammar'. It makes it seem as if the autistic people who have bad grammar have it because they're autistic.


Yes actually autism can directly cause "bad" grammar. (Note that the whole idea of "good" and "bad" grammar has incredibly elitist snobby origins in many cases.) Autism can cause all kinds of trouble understanding and using language in so many different ways. People who get language at an older age than a certain age almost never have "good grammar", and can have quite unusual ways of talking or typing. And autism causes language delays for lots of people. It has nothing to do with this HFA/LFA stuff, it's about language difficulties resulting from autism (and non-AS autism guarantees language problems, whereas some people dxed with AS will have language problems that just didn't happen to take the form of a delay and so weren't factored in to the diagnosis). There are all kinds of perceptual issues that can affect the way people deal with language. Just so very many ways autism can affect language out there... no, it doesn't have to be dyslexia. Really. Autism is more than a social problem.


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buryuntime
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19 Jan 2011, 8:46 pm

anbuend wrote:
jmnixon95 wrote:
:roll:
Having HFA or Asperger's Syndrome does not impair your ability to understand basic spelling and grammar. Conditions like dyslexia can coexist with autism. The higher-functioning autism in itself does not make one unwilling/unable to read a grammar textbook, so I ask that you do not say 'many autistic people have bad grammar'. It makes it seem as if the autistic people who have bad grammar have it because they're autistic.


Yes actually autism can directly cause "bad" grammar. (Note that the whole idea of "good" and "bad" grammar has incredibly elitist snobby origins in many cases.) Autism can cause all kinds of trouble understanding and using language in so many different ways. People who get language at an older age than a certain age almost never have "good grammar", and can have quite unusual ways of talking or typing. And autism causes language delays for lots of people. It has nothing to do with this HFA/LFA stuff, it's about language difficulties resulting from autism (and non-AS autism guarantees language problems, whereas some people dxed with AS will have language problems that just didn't happen to take the form of a delay and so weren't factored in to the diagnosis). There are all kinds of perceptual issues that can affect the way people deal with language. Just so very many ways autism can affect language out there... no, it doesn't have to be dyslexia. Really. Autism is more than a social problem.

Agreed. My sibling picked up language late and is unable to use grammar correctly. Just think of all the ways you use language you don't even have to think about. He/she/it. Past tense/present/future. Jump/jumped/jumps. Just like an aspie has problems interacting socially without consciously thinking of it, I don't see why someone with autism couldn't have problems with grammar. It's something I do quite well with but it comes naturally to me when written.



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19 Jan 2011, 9:45 pm

corroonb wrote:
The primary concern in language, whether written or spoken, is to be coherent and easy to understand. Poor grammar, spelling and punctuation are a barrier to understanding and should be avoided if at all possible. It's very difficult to correct people's grammar as many people are very sensitive about this issue. They can react in a highly emotional way to correction even if it is not intended to hurt the individual.

I personally find bad grammar, punctuation and spelling very annoying. I don't tend to bother reading such posts. My grammar isn't perfect but I try my best to improve when I make mistakes.


You know... standardized spelling is a very recent invention. There was never any prior care to "always spell things the right way so that everyone can understand it easily". People spelled things more or less how they sounded or how they were taught or whatever and it simply wasn't a single way of spelling. So people nowadays may think "It was built this way for a reason", but seriously standardized spelling and standardized grammar not only didn't have that particular reason behind them, but sometimes had some much more sinister reasons. (Like a single standardized dialect being the one that powerful people spoke and everyone else was "incorrect".) And I understand autistic people can get attached to things being "just so", but sometimes it seems like that impulse for things being "just so"... it can mix with really disturbing societal reasons for wanting something "just so", and combined, the two can do damage that the person isn't intending.


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19 Jan 2011, 9:56 pm

Standardized grammar and spelling...

There have been very few situations when I could not decipher someone else's writing, no matter how far it deviated from accepted grammatical and spelling norms. I really don't see the point of demanding that everyone communicate in exactly the same way with exactly the same forms. Does this really accomplish anything?

I once found a PTSD forum where the moderator said that traumatized people required perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation. He had an entire video about this. I didn't hang around. I don't even know where he got such an idea.



pensieve
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19 Jan 2011, 10:17 pm

anbuend wrote:
corroonb wrote:
The primary concern in language, whether written or spoken, is to be coherent and easy to understand. Poor grammar, spelling and punctuation are a barrier to understanding and should be avoided if at all possible. It's very difficult to correct people's grammar as many people are very sensitive about this issue. They can react in a highly emotional way to correction even if it is not intended to hurt the individual.

I personally find bad grammar, punctuation and spelling very annoying. I don't tend to bother reading such posts. My grammar isn't perfect but I try my best to improve when I make mistakes.


You know... standardized spelling is a very recent invention. There was never any prior care to "always spell things the right way so that everyone can understand it easily". People spelled things more or less how they sounded or how they were taught or whatever and it simply wasn't a single way of spelling. So people nowadays may think "It was built this way for a reason", but seriously standardized spelling and standardized grammar not only didn't have that particular reason behind them, but sometimes had some much more sinister reasons. (Like a single standardized dialect being the one that powerful people spoke and everyone else was "incorrect".) And I understand autistic people can get attached to things being "just so", but sometimes it seems like that impulse for things being "just so"... it can mix with really disturbing societal reasons for wanting something "just so", and combined, the two can do damage that the person isn't intending.

Many of the English speaking countries don't spell words the same way too.

I get really annoyed when people think these are spelt the wrong way or for the wrong item:

Jelly, colour, neighbour (we are the country that have the damn soap show of the same title for 25 years now), and 'S' instead of 'Z' i.e socialise.
I'm sure there's more but electronic spell checkers make me forget what country I'm even from. It's a wonder that I can still remember the metric system.


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animalfreak123
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16 Feb 2011, 7:14 pm

: 8) 1 of my favorite things to do is spell words correctly, I'm a great speller.I was taught this way by Mom cause she was angry with my spelling tests when I was little.So She practiced long and hard til I could fully understand how to spell. I used toi compete in spelling bees and I usually was 1 of the last kids still standing to spell. I miss those days, aswell as I practiced my speech at a incredible pace with my speech teachers. They recomned me using a mirror and now my speech consitently of th, sh and ch verbal words are pronouced correctly. :) Thank goodness I got this off my shoulder.



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25 Feb 2011, 3:20 pm

chewingkebabs wrote:
I've always had almost perfect spelling and grammar from when I was very young. It's from reading all the time. Personally, I've always found it easy to utilize proper English on the Internet. I don't even like to run spell check, because I go back and edit automatically if I make a typo. Like coffeegirl, my eyes jump immediately to typos in other people's work, so I think I would make a great copy editor.

Honestly, I do look down on those with poor spelling and grammar skills, though I don't bully them over it unless their content or actual point is stupid (which actually tends to be the case more often than not). Lots of NTs are biased when someone can't speak as well.


I agree with the underlined. I've read so many books, so my vocabulary is pretty big. I can spell words I don't know well enough unless there are hidden sounds in his or something, and I'm very skilled grammatically unless I'm ignoring spelling and grammar altogether.


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25 Feb 2011, 3:26 pm

I have a problem with commas. I often write the way I speak and I am often rushing to finish and don't pause.



jmnixon95
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25 Feb 2011, 3:31 pm

Good God, when did this get bumped? It's one of the most futile internet arguments to exist.



Last edited by jmnixon95 on 25 Feb 2011, 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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25 Feb 2011, 3:33 pm

I think there's often the misconception that good grammar and spelling correlates with intelligence. It doesn't. Some people are just bad spellers and it's not always something that can be overcome, except by taking the extra time to look up words (or, nowadays, using spell checkers, but they don't know which meaning of the word you meant (as in roll or role) so they don't always help).



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25 Feb 2011, 3:42 pm

anbuend wrote:
Yes actually autism can directly cause "bad" grammar.


Well, last I checked, "difficulty with grammar" is not explicitly listed as a symptom, so...

anbuend wrote:
(Note that the whole idea of "good" and "bad" grammar has incredibly elitist snobby origins in many cases.)


Nah, not really.

anbuend wrote:
People who get language at an older age than a certain age almost never have "good grammar", and can have quite unusual ways of talking or typing.


No, it's not "almost never." I'm friends with several "severely autistic" people who literally cannot speak, and they have no problem capitalizing the correct words and using correct punctuation when they write. Their word order may be a bit odd (but still grammatically correct), but they can grasp enough of basic English grammar for it to be considered "good."



anbuend
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25 Feb 2011, 7:04 pm

I said get language past a certain age. Not speech. But language in general (including understanding). I can't remember what it is but there's some neurological reason. And yes odd word order and the like is part of what I mean. Oh and I can't speak either. Anyway the people I am thinking of generally write as if English is a very foreign language -- very meaning not even in the same language family. Some cancerous more typically if they try but it takes too much out of them.


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08 Jul 2011, 1:48 pm

Hello,

This post, about a topic of considerable personal relevance to me, is my first on WP
Concerning this topic my opinion runs very much parallel to that of corroonb, of whom I'll be paraphrasing some sentences below.

Statement: Whether in writing or in speech, the primary concern in one's use of language should be clarity and coherence.

With addition of exactness, the statement above is imperative to my use of language, as much in English as in my native Dutch.

To me bad grammar is an annoyance when it is found in my own writing, me being one of those persons highly sensitive to correction.
In its essence this sensitivity is an aspect of a deeper lying fear that has for a long time been an intergral part of my life, that is, a tremendous fear of failure.

One aspect of this fear has become manifest in my use of language, wich shows itself as a maddening perfectionism in written as well as in oral communication.
This perfectionism is most clearly visible in my use of writing, wich has become severely limited, while my speech has become highly mechanical.
This does not entail that my writing is error-free¹, certainly not, and without any formal training in either Dutch or English this fear of error is not without foundation.
Shame and a feeling of uncertainty concerning this lack of formal education has for a long time been a reason for me not writing anything besides concise notes.

In short: This fear of failure that lies at the root of my almost pathological urge to revise my own writing has proven to be a major obstacle in finishing or even starting a piece of writing.
In posting this post, though, that reason is denied.

¹So as not to become dependent on it, I deny myself the use of automatic spelling correction.

This marks the end of my reaction to the topic of this topic.

Regards,
Ormusei



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08 Jul 2011, 2:50 pm

I have seen some nasty bullying even on this website over spelling and grammar. Yes, if you are writing for a university essay, for example, then spelling is important. This is not a MENSA board though, it is for people with autism--some of whom have high IQs and exceptional spelling, and others who may have accompanying learning disabilities. I think this is supposed to be a welcoming board, and it is a rather informal place. If you can understand a person's post and have something of value to contribute. If you cannot understand a person's post, you can politely ask them to clarify. A third option might be that you understand a person's post and have nothing of value to contribute (and bashing someone because of their spelling skills is not valuable!) in which case you can just bypass the discussion entirely. I think it is incredibly petty and rude to harrass someone repeatedly when they clearly have difficulty spelling.


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