A General Message To All About Spelling & Grammar

[Luke]

Greetings,

I'm really glad to see active posting on the forum again, but there's been a number of recent trends that I've found troubling.

Discussions in this forum take place in the English language, and I understand that this is not the first and strongest language of some. These people who are not as familiar with English, but make genuine efforts to write in it are greatly appreciated.

What isn't greatly appreciated is people butchering the language. Surely, the Internet does not have the reputation of being a haven for strong writing, grammar and spelling skills. It's understandable, to some degree.

But it's only understandable to a degree. Being young is not a valid excuse for being a detriment to the forum, and is not a valid excuse in itself for being deficient in English.

Please make an effort to spell things correctly. "Forum" not "form", etc.

Please make an effort to not overly abbreviate things, like using "2" instead of "to."

Please make an effort to use proper capitalization and punctuation. (The first letter of sentences and proper nouns are capitalized, not the first letter of every word.)

Use smilies and exclamation marks sparingly. They're a lot more effective if there's not patterns of a half-dozen in a row in every one of your posts.

Finally, this isn't a spelling/grammar issue, but please do make sure to search around the site and forum before posting something that may have been discussed already. There are hundreds of informative pages on the website, and nearly 30,000 posts on the forum.

Discussions are most welcome, but preferably educated discussions that make the forum a pleasant and worthwhile place for Disney and DVD fans to feel comfortable discussing relevant and interesting topics.

Thanks for your understanding and for making an effort to work on keeping these good posting habits!

[Paka]

Ooh... thanx, Luke!

I mean, uh... thanks!

I'm glad you feel this way about forum posting. It's nice to discuss things without having to worry about "translating" someone's poorly written message. There's this Spirit fan forum I go to every once in a while; I'm not sure why - I don't like the film, and the 12-year-olds around there bug the hell out of me. Probably to instill some common sense into their conversations once in a while...
Anywho, the biggest gripe I have about this Spirit forum is it's so poorly managed. Threads look more like chatrooms with one-phrase or one-word posts... board categorization is chaotic... board names are in lower-case type, and thread titles are forcibly lower-cased when you post... and even the coding for the smilies is screwed up! You type something like "spirit", "rain", or "unicorn" (in lowercase), and they pop up as emoticons! Oy...
I mean, the admin's from Holland, but she's pretty adept at English - written English, anyway. She's just kinda lethargic about real control over there. I guess obsessive-compulsive, anal-rententive me gets annoyed by it easily.

Anywho, enough with my "at this other forum" rants. Like I said before, I appreciate that you feel this way. It's a good way to keep a forum civil and organized, but it's not too stringent at the same time. Good show, lad!

[Jack]

Very good points Luke. I'll do my best to apply your suggestions, seeing as I know I've been apt to say things like "cuz" and "sup".

[Paka]

Hehe - and I should probably cut my use of "anywho"...

[Loomis]

"Me fail English? That's unpossible!"

I'm not sure what brought on this post (as useful as it is),but I actually feel that of all the many forums I have visited, UD is one of the more articulate. There is hardly any "textspeak" here (e.g. l8r, 2mrw etc), and I think useful and well thought-out discussions do surface here on the forums. I'm the first to admit I use the odd abbrev, but I think it is more out of sake of brevity. After all, we are ALL concerned with bandwidth

Everybody here has different language needs - be it youth, English as a second language or learning difficulties. I often wonder how you crazy Yanks looks at our (and the English) takes on "harbour" or "rumour". "Gee are all people in Australia and the UK such bad spellers? "

Being young is not a valid excuse for being a detriment to the forum, and is not a valid excuse in itself for being deficient in English

I agree to a point. I mean one's writing skills mature with experience, and the posting of stuff on the forum will help and encourage some people to develop skills for l8r (sorry, couldn't resist). But in all seriousness, this is a good written outlet for some people.

At any rate, I'm sure you have your reasons for these new guidelines, and I'll do my best to adhere to them.

Keep up the good work

[STASHONE]

OMG D1$N3Y RuLeZ LOLZ!!!

[wdwleesa]

Thanks, Luke, for this wonderful post!

As a former English teacher, I cringe at some of the spelling I see, not just on this forum but everywhere. Just this morning, I saw a caption on our local news that was spelled incorrectly. Things like that really catch my eye.

Leesa

[Disney Guru]

Yes I Agree With You Completely Luke. I Am Shocked wIth Some Of The Bad English And Some Of The Rotten Spelling THat Some Users Use.

[Chernabog]

Yes I Agree With You Completely Luke. I Am Shocked wIth Some Of The Bad English And Some Of The Rotten Spelling THat Some Users Use.

Yes but still you use capitalizing on every word

And Luke, please tell me if I should not use the evil emoticons in my postings any more?
Maybe that was what you mentioned in that we use the emoticons too much?
Please let me know!

[Prince Adam]

Yes I Agree With You Completely Luke. I Am Shocked wIth Some Of The Bad English And Some Of The Rotten Spelling THat Some Users Use.

Yes but still you use capitalizing on every word

And Luke, please tell me if I should not use the evil emoticons in my postings any more?
Maybe that was what you mentioned in that we use the emoticons too much?
Please let me know!

I am not perfect when it comes to grammar (although my friends tell me I'm terribly annoying when I correct them!), but the capitalization is a little annoying...

[poco]

Thanks for this post, Luke.

I think it is a good idea to have a post like this because those that are leaning English (either as a second language or learning to write English) will learn good English. I received a letter in the mail the other day and noticed a few errors, mind you, I see the occassional grammar mistake, but the ones I noticed were pretty bad. They would not be hired here at this hospital for their use of language and that is pretty bad. I think it is wise to help educate the younger on the forum. Thanks for the post on this.

[indianajdp]

I'm a rebel.
I constantly thumb my nose at authority.

For example, I'm typing this post with just one finger. Why? Because "The Man" says I shouldn't or I'll be nothing more than a "Hunt'n'Peckor". Well I scoff at The Man!! How ya like me now??!!!!!???

...edited to say that it took me 11 minutes to type the above being a Hunt'n'Peckor, so maybe I have learned my lesson

[Doug]

Thank you for this post Luke! I hope it helps. Not that I ever posted a whole lot (it's been many months since my last one) but I used to read a lot of this forum. I really drifted away from it as I felt it was dumbed down entirly by many of these posts. You do a great job with this whole thing.

[Swiss]

Thanks Luke!

[ThiagoPE]

Discussions in this forum take place in the English language, and I understand that this is not the first and strongest language of some. These people who are not as familiar with English, but make genuine efforts to write in it are greatly appreciated.

Luke: I agree with what you said, for us, that don´t have the english like our mother language, is very hard to understand these things, like writing a number instead write the correct word.

I also want to register here that: Im making the biggests efforts to write in the proper english, b ut sometimes, is not so easy for us, foreigners write correctily. I for example, lot of times o change the word TO by FOR (because in my language we use just one word for both senses in english). I epect, you and everyone in the forun, can sorry me because my mistakes .

OK

Thiago

[Mr. Toad]

Not more grammar nazis.

[MickeyMouseboy]

"Me fail English? That's unpossible!" I often wonder how you crazy Yanks :

Jigga what!? I'm not a Yank! I'm a Loomistian from the land of the Looms I'm Aussie all the way! Them crazy brits!

[Lars Vermundsberget]

And since this is a Disney forum, please note:

"101 Dalmatians" should NOT be spelt with an "o" - "Dalmations".

[Paka]

And since this is a Disney forum, please note:

"101 Dalmatians" should NOT be spelt with an "o" - "Dalmations".

Amen to that!!

And I applaude any non-native speakers on this board who try their best to write in English with correct form. It's very commendable of you to make such an effort!

*gives cookies to the Europeans and the South Americans...*

[MickeyMouseboy]

And since this is a Disney forum, please note:

"101 Dalmatians" should NOT be spelt with an "o" - "Dalmations".

Amen to that!!

And I applaude any non-native speakers on this board who try their best to write in English with correct form. It's very commendable of you to make such an effort!

*gives cookies to the Europeans and the South Americans...*

Hey you forgot the New Zelanders,Loomistians. Ocenians, Middle Easterns, Orientals, and Africans! we are not part of Europe! We want a cookie Too!