Bad speling not jsut for forgin hackers anyomre

[hackajar]

More hackers becoming bad spellers seems to be an interesting topic cropping up as of late.

Here in the forums I've gotten flocked several times for being a bad spell, as have many others. It seems though, that I'm not the only hacker with this problem. I still joke that I scored in upper 5% in math, reading and writting competency exams, but lower, yes lower 1% in spelling. True story.

What's your thoughts on this?

[dYn4mic]

I've had a similar problem in spelling my entire life, and it slows my writing/typing speed because I often have to think about how to spell something, because my vocab is much larger than my 'know how to spell' vocab. (so i just abrevate or write things in a different mannor (see last sentence)... But I slowly improve with common words that I continued to misspell.

I read through a lot of the comments on the page, the normal arguments apply. I do think people are getting worse and worse about spelling, we should try to find whats wrong with the education system, not 'just that most kids these days can't spell as good'.

Most of the time i can get the point across, those who know me will disreguard my spelling mistakes or grammer mistakes because they know im not in 6th grade, but those who don't, may see me in a negative light. Sadly I don't have the time or patience to go and re-learn some spelling. For lots of things (like here on the forums) I hope that people can tell by my ideas and insight, my spelling is not a good reflection of my skills in thought/etc...
When using gaim/irc I tend to abrevate a whole lot more, and write things like 'im' is a perfect example. Now I write I'm as 'im' almost all the time just out of habit.
Text msg's on my phone are even worse, but you get the idea....

Can spell checking devices just replace our need to learn spelling?
I'd say no.. sure it helps, but thats just a lazy excuse.

Anything that I'm going to really 'put my name on', esp. that if I know its going to be out in public or examined carefully, I normally read over, spellcheck and revise...

spellcheck.net can be nice.

[converge]

I think I can explain my descent into ill'iteracy.

As a kid I was actually quite good in the arts of language compared to others my age. I would complete spelling tests in the second grade with words that would challenge many forth or fifth graders. I also was quite interested in reading, particularly fiction.

As I grew, my love for math and logic increased exponentially. Looking through some old school papers recently reminded me that I once had sucked donkey balls in the area of math skills. But that changed. I also grew less and less interested in reading. Book reports became excercises of tricking the teacher into believing that I read the whole thing cover to cover.. something I actually did pretty good at.

Then I hit my atari / nes era (the two systems my parents could afford to bring in at their respective times). Video games consumed me, not only in my quest to have fun but in my understanding of how the games were logically programmed and designed. Hours and hours soaked my time up and kept me far from even thinking about books or reading.

Then I discovered the BBS. Upon frequenting many local systems, as well as starting to dabble in the AOL/Prodigy/etc realm... books became the furthest thing from my mind. I actually went from the top 1% of my class to achieving B and C grades for not doing ANY of my homework. I spent all my time online as much as possible.

Since then I have not turned back. By the time I realized the world of BBS, I had already dabbled in some minor programming, new DOS inside out, and whatnot. I would sooner sit for hours in front of my BASIC interpreter creating a crystal clear monopoly board using PSETs than I would bothering to lift a pen or paper. At some point I completely lost the ability to read a book. I still haven't found it.

.. it's kind of hard to comprehend personally.. but every time I try to sit down and commit to reading, my mind drifts off in approximately 2 or 3 minutes. I could sit down and read c code til my eyes bleed, browse websites and read rfcs to my hearts content.. but sit me down for five minutes with a paperback and I'll be passed out before you return.

Naturally.. the lack of reading and interest in grammar stunted my usage database, as well as my ability to spell. Who knows.. maybe some day I'll get it back by playing scrabble too much....

[Ridirich]

Honestly, I agree but let me add this:

A hacker checks programming languages, right? How the heck are you supposed to master a second and third language if you cannot even master your first?

What I hate more than horrible spelling is sheer lazieness like "l8r" and "w8".

Hackers use all tools available to them, and www.dictionary.com is the best one I know of.

[bascule]

It's not our fault there are so many digraphs that don't map phonetically... definately matches the phonemes as well as reversable does [sic and sic]

[TheCotMan]

Perhaps it is an issue of memorization vs. understanding-- people who do well at memorization, but poorly with problem solving and tool-combination, don't go the hacking route for obvious reasons, while those skilled with problem-solving but poor at memorization are discouraged by spelling mistakes, and end up avoiding memorization even more as time passes and pushed more into tasks where they are strong with problem solving.

(Maybe this also helps to explain why many actors can't play the role of a hacker-- they are good at memorization (of lines) and may have been steered away from hackish things. ;-)

I make plenty of mistakes while typing replies on the forums. Most of the words in my posts that you see spelled incorrectly are caused by bad typing where I "fat-finger" a few keys, or omit a character here and there because I did not press the key hard enough.

Most of the time, proof reading my posts allows me to catch my mistakes, but if I do it too soon, my mind fills in many missing characters, so those I don't notice as quickly.Many of my grammatical errors are an unfortunate side-effect of revision-editing while typing responses. I've tried to fix my mistakes when I saw them within 24 hours, but beyond that, it is not really worth my time.

Early OS People must have been bad spellers:
MD, mkdir, MKDIR = Make Directory
COPY, cp = copy
sed = stream editor
tr = translate

[Ridirich]

Granted, like Converge, I used to read books cover to cover. Give me a book and I would most likely read it start to finish. The only books I can stomach now are manuals and such, mostly because I do not have to stare at the white background with the black lettering for a long time, when you add in the sun making the pages blur before your eyes because of all the words on the pages, it is enough to make your rods and cones go and take a vacation.

I think the majority of that report is about "code kiddies" who speak in leet speak so that they feel important, but try to get them to spell a sentance correctly and you will need your secret idiot decoder ring.

It is true, that when you are better at one skill, you practice it more, because it takes less effort. That is human nature. A person good at problem solving and math will be more inclined to do that in their spare time rather than sit down and write a letter to the editor every week. Hell, I still build models. I think the problem begins in our public school systems though. Our teachers need to teach balance of learning and not burn the kids out. I think of it this way: If you want someone to learn something you either burn them out to the point that they are laying there in pieces and build them back up...in which case you will be no better than a KGB agent, OR you teach balanced things about what you want the person(s) to learn then let their mind take a break, let them excersize their bodies...and then continue.

I personally feel that school-age children have a full time job. School is 8 hours a day plus commute time. If your boss told you "Hey, take this home and do it there,." would you be ticked? I know for a fact if my boss called me up at home and told me to work on a patient in my residence I would most definitly be pissed.
How is a kid differant?

My belief for public schools all the way from kindergarden to senior year in highschool should have well-balanced class days, no more than 10 kids per teacher so the teacher can focus on the weaker student(s) and breaks, as well as no homework. It would then allow their minds to grow correctly instead of being burnt out.

We have a stupidity epidemic because all these kids are growing up burnt out, grades mean alot to them so they excel in the things easier to them and go down a slope on things that aren't. We also have a fat epidemic in the world(esp. US) due to kids not having time to play around outside. No homework, except the request that the kids are outside for so many hours after school would be perfect. Have areas in cities where kids could all go and play, under supervision...or whatnot.

The problem is, that kids come home, do their homework, get burnt out, turn on the video game, tv or computer and that is it for the night.

What you learn as a child will carry into your adulthood.

[edit] Oh yeah, I know someone is going to come up with the money problem. "Well teachers don't make enough, we don't have enough tax money for them." Teachers make too much. I know for a fact that teachers in my area make 50 thou a year in a public school. They only work for 10 months of the year, but by the time you add up teacher's days, paid vacations during school year, weekends...it actually adds up to 7 1/2. Now, honestly...wouldn't you love a job where all you did was read out of a book and make people repeat it, then make sure it matched 7 1/2 months out of a year and made 50k for it?

I think we should cut that in half, 25k per teacher, add in more teachers(it would double the teaching population per classroom) and make their punk asses work the other two months in school too, and give them 5k for those two months, so teachers would really work 12 months a year and earn 30k. Make THEM prepare the teaching material so the kids understand it better. Make them plan every school day in those two months for the upcoming year.

Maybe once retards stop coming out of schools we can increase their pay by spending less money on the idiots at DOT. Again, I know for a fact they do nothing because I know a few DOT workers, being in the profession I am, and they take 2 hour breaks and only work 8 hours....and you see how shitty the roads are.[/edit]

[lil_freak]

What's your thoughts on this?

I myself, like so many others also have a problem with spelling words correctly. Which is why I love the spell check function found on many computers and have quite a few dictionaries lying around at both my place of work and at home. While I understand that the problem of spelling words correctly is huge on a national level, I don’t quite understand why some of those who are poor spellers don’t take the steps need to help themselves out.

While there have been many of a paper written about bad spelling and those who are bad spellers. I feel that each person has a different reason as to why they are bad at spelling. However, most of the papers and articles tend to lead those reading them to think and/or believe that bad spelling comes from one or two conclusions. Yet are the conclusions that doctors and teachers make true? I say no, only because I don't fit into any of the papers I have read and when was it that we all suddenly came from the rankings, life styles, etc.


From the words of Mark Twain, I leave you with a potential educational solution for the problem of spelling:

...For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replaced either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

[Ridirich]

The sick thing, is I could read that.

I think I need counseling.

[hackajar]

From the words of Mark Twain, I leave you with a potential educational solution for the problem of spelling:

Krist Almity E'm not dat bad!

[subzero1037]

Whoa didn't expect to find this here. Im good friends with Strom and we were talking about this the other day and he just decided to write something for Slashdot.

But, I agree to a point that we should try to work on spelling issues, but in the sense that I hate having to talk to someone that says things like "r u 4 reel" instead of how its normally said. That is a pet peeve of mine, sure its fast to write but it hurts my eyes.

[ch0l0man]

Grammar and I have never really gotten a long, but I do try and make sure my posts are written so that others can understand them without causing brain damage.

During my time growing up there were no spell checkers so I just made sure that there was always a dictionary close at hand. Sometimes I would use books, the TV Guide or other magazines to correct my spelling.

The thing I hear from most people is that, "this is the net" so grammar isn't important. I would bet that most of there people still wouldn't do well even if it wasn't the net.

It is one thing to use stuff like, "c u 2morrow" when sending a message from your phone, but not when you are typing a post, it is not the time or place.

[noid]

Holy crap! Its Choloman. Been a while

As far as the grammar thing goes, thats why we actually have a rule on the forums about not using SMS type grammar. People don't seem to realize that it goes beyond just being an annoyance. How you type on the Internet is the equivilent of how you talk in real life. When U type lik dis, you are basically telling me that you are uneducated and lazy. Now, you may not be, but that is how you come across.

Real world example. I work in a very technical position at a very technical company. I earn a good wage thats much more than the national average. I have spoken in front of large groups ranging from college students to CEOs. However, outside of work I choose to use a lot of slang and profanity. Couple this with the fact that I look like a biker, and the end result is people who dont take me seriously when I offer an opinion on something technical. However, I expect this and am not phased by this. But I understand that looking and talking like a grease monkey will in turn cause the people I interact with to assume that I am a grease monkey and not a security architect, because all they can base their opinion of me on is my appearance and mannerisms.

Same goes for the Internet. If you type like you are lazy and uneducated, I am going to assume you are, regardless of how many degrees you may hold. It gets even more frusturating when people type like that while asking for help. Whenever I see 'can u teech me 2 hack?' all I can think is 'If this person cant take the effort to type the word 'you' instead of 'u' then why should I take the time to teach this person anything'.

[Deviant Ollam]

personally, i've tended to be a pretty good speller and gramarian when i'm focusing on what i'm doing (i'll be the first to admit that it does tend to slip a bit when shooting quick and dirty messages around online) but i credit that to the good fortune of attending one of the nation's few public school districts that was really outstanding.

however, i have to ask, growing accustomed to using spelling tools (as many of us are) does anyone ever use Google as a spell checker, or am i the only one? this is in part because i'm alwyas typing while composing something (as opposed to writing longhand) and because mozilla allows for an instantaneous google search right from the location bar, while going to dictionary.com involves bringing focus to a second text box, performing a search, waiting for the new page to load, etc. (sure, we're talking the difference between 5 seconds and 2 seconds... but hey)

i find myself more and more just dumping a complex word i'm unsure of into the auto google search and letting the engine come back with "suggestions" of what i might have been trying to hit as query. this is nice in that, besides being faster, google will also nail well-known proper names, technical terms, and multiple-word strings (like legislation, court cases, news items, etc)

[ch0l0man]

Hey Noid! Yeah it has been, I will be looking for you this year at con. :)

I used to use google for checking my spelling, but know I use the Dictionary.com search in Firefox for that now.