spell check anyone

[Lump]

Before I find myself "lumped" (you gotta love my pun on my username, right?) into a crowd that does not think spelling or grammar is important, let me state that I certainly do respect those skills. As a paid professional automotive writer/marketer, I depend on spelling and grammar daily for my living.

However, on a forum like Garage Journal, I am much more interested in valuable insights, knowledge, and experience from seasoned automotive professionals than I am in proper spelling and grammar. The last thing I would want to do would be to discourage any tool-oriented person from posting interesting information here, because some kind of self-appointed "Proper English Usage Police" might critcize their spelling or grammar. And I am not at all interested in reading negative critiques and verbal attacks by people who may consider themselves to be superior to others...especially when that "superiority" may be in a discipline not related to tools, garages, or mechanical things.

I'm also willing to bet that, if most of the members of Garage Journal had been with me at some SEMA events in recent years, listening to world-renowned engine builders, performance camshaft developers, race team owners, and others discussing their experiences and techniques, that none of us would have wanted to interrupt a brilliant person because they had used improper grammar. I'll bet instead you all would have done just as I did, every time, and listened with rapt attention to every word. I'll go a step further and suggest that, not one of us would have said, "That guy who was explaining how they are developing the latest high performance camshaft profiles was an idiot. Did you hear how he left a dangling participle at the end of his first sentence?" Instead, when that (example) moment was over, GJ members discussing it would not even mention anyone's grammar. Rather, we would revel in the wonderful memory and the enlightening experience.

And that is how I like to use Garage Journal; as a place to enjoy lots of different people of many different backgrounds, personalities, styles, and levels of formal education. I hope that they are ALL willing to share their experience and knowledge about tools, garages, and mechanical things.

That is my point.

 

[december45]

I think its important to be able to write and spell, its part of the basics that we learned in school. Well we were supose to learn in school, obviously some learned it better than others, english, as you can tell, wasnt my strong suit.
I am amazed that the conversation seems to wonder all over the place.
I know I try hard to insure that my words are spelled correctly and there is some order to my punctuation, I also know that I'm guilty of using the ...... way too often, but what I believe is important is that I am trying my best to make sure the words are spelled correctly. Its hard to believe that spelling isn't important enough to at least try, to make the effort to put that "best foot forward" . The idea that I don't give a **** seems to be unreasonable.
Not that I don't believe it, but I have a hard time understanding how texting spelling is the wave of the future, just seems to me there is more to communicating than speed and easy.
just my humble opinion

 

[xcgates]

I hereby declare that anything I may have messed up, in regards to spelling/language/etc shall be declared "Poetic License" and treated as the great revelation to all the unwashed masses that should be joyous for the fruits of my wonderful brain.

 

[svtfordlightning]

Maybe on the second thought i should just keep lurking...

 

[Lump]

There have been some good valid points raised in this thread. However, the very nature of the discussion lends itself too well to critical analysis of each other. If I were the mods...I would lock this one down.

Then maybe we could all go back to talking about tools, etc.

Just my opinion.

 

[tatra]

I am amazed that the conversation seems to "wonder" all over the place.

we all make mistakes and it i took a nano second of my time to understand the word was meant to be "wander"..........took longer to post this ...........i believe this falls under the category of sweating the small stuff and agree with lump to lock this thread before it gets nasty...........and lump, very eloquent writing, i enjoy your posts even tho i find them long winded but i have the attention span of a gna.........ooo, look butterflies........lalalalala............