Is this because I'm an aspie? - Grammar, spelling, punctuat

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jmnixon95
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13 Mar 2011, 5:14 am

On WP, there are numerous threads on grammar; why do people feel the need to initiate new ones? The old ones sank for a reason.



Verdandi
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13 Mar 2011, 5:34 am

I used to be more snobbish about grammar until I managed to thoroughly hurt (not just offend) a good friend of mine about 12 years ago or so, and even then it took someone to explain what exactly I had said that was wrong.

Since then I've gone to the other extreme: As long as I can read it, I don't care. I prefer my spelling and grammar to be as nearly accurate as possible, but that's just how I prefer to write, and I do not feel it is more valid to communicate this way than it is any other.

I agree with everything anbuend said about the power dynamics involved.



draelynn
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13 Mar 2011, 12:06 pm

jmnixon95 wrote:
On WP, there are numerous threads on grammar; why do people feel the need to initiate new ones? The old ones sank for a reason.


... because not everyone saw those original threads? Because there are lots of newbies that haven't sifted through the thousands of old threads to find them? Because new experiences may have sparked new thoughts on the subject?



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13 Mar 2011, 12:21 pm

old_fool wrote:
Dear all,


I am rather fastidious about grammar, spelling and punctuation. I am not perfect, far from it (I do believe I use too many commas, but was never able to learn the finer rules), but I am very annoyed reading internet posts and e-mails with conspicuous errors. I think wrong and careless punctuation makes reading particularly painful for me.

Note that deliberate misspelling for humorous purposes does NOT bother me the least, and in fact, I enjoy it. E.g. the "Hillbilly/English Dickshunairy"

Is it a quirk specific to me, or is it somewhat common with aspies?


I know NTs with the "quirk".

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13 Mar 2011, 12:26 pm

I'm the same way with regard to the use of proper speaking and writing skills. It seems to be a common trait among Asperger's people. However, my mother was a military school teacher, and an English major in college. As mentioned in a post above, this may be a contributing factor in the drive to excel in this area.

I aint gots no tolerationment for lazy writing or lousy punctuation and bad grammar

i also detest txt msgs wit goofy 'brevia'tns and no punctuation or caps at all

I am, however, somewhat frequenttly guilty of tpyographical errors :).

Charles



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13 Mar 2011, 12:38 pm

I hate texting period. Mostly, this is due to my intense dislike of phones. The fact that I can't figure out how to make a full sentence with caps and punctuation just amplifies my dislike.


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13 Mar 2011, 1:01 pm

anbuend wrote:
buryuntime wrote:
it's common amongst aspies, but not in any way exclusive and not really indicative of autism.

"as*hole" or "snob" are what people likely think of upon having their grammar corrected, not "aspie".


Snob isn't far off the mark.

Standardized spelling is a recent invention.

Standardized grammar simply means the grammar of the dialect with the most power and clout. All other dialects are not "inferior" or "bad grammar". They each have their own grammar that makes sense. And even within each dialect there is much personal variation and that is okay. People forget that English is a living language full of variation and growing and changing with each user of that language. The remark about "Ebonics" as bad grammar was particularly telling because that particular set of dialects some people call Ebonics has been studied extensively and contains its own consistent grammatical structure combining English usages with usages taken from various African languages. It's not "bad English" any more than standard English, with its collection of influences, is. All it would take is a different set of people with power and you guys would be arguing that what we now call standard English is inexcusably terrible grammar while what we now call some dialect other than that is perfect grammar.

And all this is besides the fact that standard English has been artificially altered to be what it is, by the grammar snobs of previous generations. There have been alterations to our grammar by people who wanted to force Latin grammatical structures on English. Not to mention the demonization of the word ain't. And lots more. Some of these decisions were made as a means of making class divisions clearer, making "lower class" people into people with "bad grammar" by enhancing the differences in dialect and creating rules where no rules previously existed.

So yes, intentional or not, being obsessed with "proper grammar" (and especially while condemning those with nonstandard (non-powerful) dialects as having bad grammar) has a snobbish element to it. Besides what it does to speakers of other dialects, it's unfair to people with dyslexia and other learning disabilities as well as many autistic people who have language issues. (I am decent at standard grammar usually when I'm writing anyway, but get me at a bad moment and much of that will go out the window.)

And I haven't even gotten into the differences in standard English between different countries.

I do understand how this all fits in with autism and have sometimes fallen into it myself, but still, people would not have this obsession if it weren't for the unfair power dynamics I've described existing.

I can understand dialectical differences. I'm perfectly fine with them. I do not believe you can in any way excuse the confusion of "there" with "their", "here" with "hear" and "its" with "it's". There is a reason why we have words: we have words in order to be able to communicate. If we start morphing words with completely different meanings into the same word, then meaning is lost, along with information and communication.

And all this has absolutely nothing to do with class warfare. In my experience, the richer a person is, the poorer he or she is educated, and the less they value education. If you listen to the likes of Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, you would have the impression higher education is useless. Heck, they proved it themselves. In contrast, people with the highest education, working in research have the worst salaries and the worst job security. We can't afford to be sloppy about our grammar, because we write scientific articles or books that have to be readable by the largest possible audience - our product is science and it is intended for all humankind - while rich people really couldn't care less. If you have a few billions in the bank, if you are a celebrity, you can be as ignorant as a mushroom, it doesn't matter.



old_fool
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13 Mar 2011, 1:06 pm

Same thing with punctuation: we have punctuation because it makes communication possible. Without punctuation, sentences can be ambiguous, misleading of downright nonsensical. I can excuse people who have some kind of dyslexia, or other issue with punctuation, but usually they try to make it clear what they actually meant. But then there are those individuals who just couldn't care less - and their disregard for punctuation is nothing but disregard for other people.



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13 Mar 2011, 3:03 pm

I remember my peers asking me to proof read their work when I was in Grades 6 and 7. I had to tell them to proof read their own work, because I was busy doing mine, unless they had money to pay me. That shut them up. I felt that I was doing them a favour and that with practice, their spelling and grammar would be as good as mine.


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buryuntime
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13 Mar 2011, 3:30 pm

CockneyRebel wrote:
I remember my peers asking me to proof read their work when I was in Grades 6 and 7. I had to tell them to proof read their own work, because I was busy doing mine, unless they had money to pay me. That shut them up. I felt that I was doing them a favour and that with practice, their spelling and grammar would be as good as mine.

To proofread one requires knowledge of grammar and punctuation. If you proofread their work they would have been aware of their mistakes when they might not have without your help.

I impulsively correct grammar and spelling sometimes but I feel bad about it, because I don't want anybody to feel bad. If somebody has obvious issues with such I'm less likely to correct. It's mostly when it's normally okay but then there is some glaring mistake and I must make it right or it's kind of upsetting. If I see a mistake in a book I can get very upset about it too.

I correct myself too but it seems I'm more likely to make mistakes with negatives or just not making any sense which is an entirely different problem when one can't be understood.



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13 Mar 2011, 4:54 pm

I am horrible at spelling, punctuation and grammar. It doesn't bother me when others are bad at it also.



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13 Mar 2011, 5:09 pm

old_fool wrote:
I can understand dialectical differences. I'm perfectly fine with them. I do not believe you can in any way excuse the confusion of "there" with "their", "here" with "hear" and "its" with "it's". There is a reason why we have words: we have words in order to be able to communicate. If we start morphing words with completely different meanings into the same word, then meaning is lost, along with information and communication.


I have as good a vocabulary as anyone and a tendency to overuse polysyllabic words where simpler would suffice, and I also frequently mistype homophones for each other (link) without thinking about it. It happens, and there are plenty of reasons for it to happen. It's a pointless waste of time to treat people like it's some kind of personal failure that they misused a word, especially in informal settings such as internet forums.

If you know enough to correct their language, you know what they meant all along, and thus your correction is probably completely unnecessary.

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And all this has absolutely nothing to do with class warfare. In my experience, the richer a person is, the poorer he or she is educated, and the less they value education. If you listen to the likes of Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, you would have the impression higher education is useless. Heck, they proved it themselves. In contrast, people with the highest education, working in research have the worst salaries and the worst job security. We can't afford to be sloppy about our grammar, because we write scientific articles or books that have to be readable by the largest possible audience - our product is science and it is intended for all humankind - while rich people really couldn't care less. If you have a few billions in the bank, if you are a celebrity, you can be as ignorant as a mushroom, it doesn't matter.


Except that language usage is not a viable indicator of someone's ignorance or lack thereof. It's simply an indicator of how they use language. To extrapolate from that to making judgments about their character and knowledge base does not make sense.

All of the above applies to punctuation as well.



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13 Mar 2011, 5:16 pm

I find myself spotting spelling and grammatical errors all the time. Sometimes I get a physical itch or twitch when I see something wrong (eg recently I was given a leaflet with details of how to fix my laptop. On the front: 'camera's, laptops and TVs'). However, I do like to use odd spellings for teh lolz. But even in that sense it conveys the odd tone of voice I'd be using if I was speaking in person. I understand there are people with dyslexia and such, but then there are people who are just lazy. My problem is that I do feel a little mean correcting other people - I don't mean it badly, but it doesn't always occur to me that they may have taken it that way. Sometimes I've simply seen something they've done wrong because they've never been told the right way to do it; so then I'm doing them a favour by telling them how to do it. Or at least that's how it works in my mind. It is also ridiculous in a professional setting; if spelling and/or grammar is a problem for any individual, they ought to hire somebody else to check it all and correct it.

old_fool wrote:
Same thing with punctuation: we have punctuation because it makes communication possible. Without punctuation, sentences can be ambiguous, misleading of downright nonsensical. I can excuse people who have some kind of dyslexia, or other issue with punctuation, but usually they try to make it clear what they actually meant. But then there are those individuals who just couldn't care less - and their disregard for punctuation is nothing but disregard for other people.


Absolutely agreed.

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13 Mar 2011, 5:19 pm

Yeah, this has nothing at all to do with "valuing education". The whole idea that using them "right" is "better educated" is itself part of the problem, not a defense of the problem.

I, too, often mistype homophones for each other. I didn't used to do it. But I use a voice-output communication aid, and it often requires me to type words as they sound, not as they are, in order to make them sound right. And ever since I started doing that, I started typing words as each other.

Also, my ipod (which is often the only way I can post here at all) has an autocorrection feature that has some weird corrections, like if you type "its" it changes it to "it's", "ones" changes to "one's", "cats" changes to "cat's", things like that. And I cannot always go back and "correct" those.

There is plenty of excuse for typing words as they sound, not as they look, and the whole idea that it's somehow this horrible thing to do is what's wrong here. It really isn't hurting anyone, it has nothing to do with how educated you are or how much you value education, and honestly people used to mix up various spellings all the time and as long as you could tell how it sounded from how it was spelled then it was okay. Standardized spelling is a recent invention. It's not a rule that everyone must follow, it was just imposed after a certain point and everyone takes it for granted as "proper" now even though it's pretty arbitrary as to whether it has to be "proper" or not.


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13 Mar 2011, 5:31 pm

buryuntime wrote:
"as*hole" or "snob" are what people likely think of upon having their grammar corrected, not "aspie".
Who said anything about correcting? I sure haven't. You're just building a straw man to throw arrows of "righteous rage" against.



old_fool
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13 Mar 2011, 5:34 pm

Verdandi wrote:
If you know enough to correct their language, you know what they meant all along, and thus your correction is probably completely unnecessary.
Again, who said anything about correcting?