Please do not take this topic as offensive, rather a pointer in the direction that will help you, the members of this forum and guests.

Introduction:
Astahost, as you may well know, is based on a more professional and formal tone than sister site Trap17. This professionalism should be shown through in-depth information, developed with highly accurate grammar and spelling. However, through looking at recent topics and posts from new contributors and existing ones, it would appear that this professionalism is being delimited, in ways that is having negative effects on the site as a whole.

Grammar, the Founding Stone of Good Communication.
In order to make sense of a language, you need rules. For programmers, and those with good general knowledge, these rules are known as syntax. If you put your words in the wrong order, or don’t apply the right connectives, then the whole meaning of your sentence can change unexpectedly, or ultimately mean nothing. In the likelihood it results in meaning nothing, your topic/post will be deleted, as something that means nothing is also known as useless, and therefore results in spam.

Additionally to your words having to gell together to make an understandable sentence, you also need to use COMMAS. I have seen many members in many forums, not using commas. They don’t mean, take a breath, but their nature of splitting sentences into usable segments is what gives the ‘breath-take’ effect. If you are unsure on how to use commas, then use Google to find articles. There should be hundreds, especially on Exam Revision sites.


The above is an example of someone that doesn’t use commas, or when they do, it is sparingly. Using commas helps people to understand better the context behind the words. Even if a sentence doesn’t make any sense really, the use of commas in the right places helps to get a slightly better hand on of what the author is conveying.

So please, when making a topic/post. Firstly check if you have it capitalised and also you have used the appropriate punctuation where it is needed.

Spelling Matters.
Without good spelling practice, it eventually affects other aspects of your life. Especially if you are in Education, as it eventually spills onto your work. I for one noticed this problem, as I often write words like ‘they’ without the ‘y’ on the end. This, I believe is because of the use of deprecating my words when chatting to others, and not being bothered about it, as they ‘can figure it out’. Unfortunately, this liberty should not be extended to other areas online, like main documents within sites and also in discussion boards. It is appalling to see members typing in short-hand. Whilst it may be faster and more natural to write that way, one man’s l33t is another man’s mess. For me, to see things like “Hw r u?” anywhere near a discussion board is demeaning to the owners and the respectable members.

You should take your time when making a new topic/post to make sure that your spelling is accurate, or else you will find that many members start getting annoyed.


I understand that no-one is perfect, and obviously you can’t check your accuracy all of the time. But, if you take just a few seconds to proof-read your topic/post before sending it, then you will reduce confusion and annoyance.

I honestly don't think grammar or commas matter. Even at the slightest. Some language arts teachers are really strict about this nowadays. Most of them believe that if all the commas aren't in the right place, it means that your paper isn't very good. They don't care about voice, humor, or how moving it is. If you just add some long, flowery words, or if you're spelling is good, they'll think it's a good paper. That annoys me.

I have to admit, my spelling is far from flawless; as is my use of punctuation. This is mainly due to the fact that I am not a native speaker, and that in my native tongue, Dutch/Flemish, the punctuation is used differently than in English. To add to it, in most English courses, punctuation is hardly ever covered. At one point I even asked my English teacher about the correct use of the comma and semi-colon and he bluntly answered me that it doesn't matter since the topic wasn't covered in the course.

If you ask me whether or not I agree with Twitch, my answer is simple. I agree wholeheartedly. I know how annoyed I can get when reading through a text where no punctuation is used, and I know how aggrivated I get when I am forced to read through the most atrocious spelling errors in my own native tongue.

Now, I will hush because I don't wish to be hurt by Twitch for butchering HIS native language in this post.

(Bear in mind, when I am very conscious of my spelling and grammar, I will most likely mess up more.)

Hehe - so do I wholeheartedly agree with twitch. Spelling and Grammar are not only two important aspects of any good writeup, but they essentially reflect how far you're willing to go to make yourself be understood. Leaving others to do a guesswork between what you wrote and what you meant - is NOT a good thing to do.

Moreover, the use of punctuations - as twitch pointed out - isn't restricted to writing. The "breathing" and "voice-modulation" that one does during talking are the auditory counterparts of punctuations. While we easily grasp a lot from these pitch modulations during a conversation - don't forget we've the advantage of SEEING that person face-to-face on most occasions. We are at a big advantage here as we get to observe gestures and facial expressions - and subliminallu these contribute a lot towards our final understanding of the conversation. Same goes for Classroom teaching and Presentations.

BUT - when we hand in inert articles to be reviewed, or in our case here, make posts, we've only got punctuations to back them up. Our posts cannot be heard, neither are they accompanied by the aforesaid expressions and gestures. Punctuations are our essential means of rendering those same expressions to an inert piece of text. Why do you think we've got the Exclamation !!! and Question ??? marks ? Do you think you'd really be able to tell the difference in most cases if our sentences weren't delimited with these ?

Imagine a board-room presentation or a class teacher going on in a dull monotone for hours - without any pitch flunctuations or kinesthesis (body movements/gestures). How long will you remain interested in such a class/presentation and how much of the subject will you actually retain ? The same goes for articles without puncutations and proper formatting - they just turn into a dull, boring and most unintelligible piece - however well they might be written.

Well, first of all, I kinda agree with twitch. When I first came to Astahost, it wasn't that strikingly professional-looking. But hold on - I'm really busy right now so I will post some more later

So with what you are saying without grammar or punctuation this sentence makes sense although I have directed it in a questionable way as without the punctuation in place you end up getting a headache and reduces your chances of understanding what I am putting. A good site to see English at its worst is teenspot.com forum boards. Although the main site is respectable the forums have little to say about themselves because people are getting lazy no other explanation but lazy and why is this because time is restricted and the examiners in England are allowing American spellings and grammatical sentencing for GCSE work. The teachers complain but nothing is done about it.

As you can see, the above paragraph is harder to make sense of and gave me a headache, just by deprecating my punctuation. English is like an art. English is a written method of communication and allows us to put across what we mean, through the use of syntax.

Language is something that allows us to communicate to each other, to express our thoughts and emotions. When it comes to written communication, we express our inflections and pauses with punctuation. Without punctuation, the words would be there, but on the other end you would think it was coming from a monosyllabic person, the sentences would have no emotion in them.

If you struggle to grasp the importance of spelling and grammar, then turn your attention to this example.

Say, for example, you are making a very important website in XHTML. Now, think of XHTML as a representitive of English. By nature, XHTML demands 99% accuracy, organisation and attention to detail. This is the same with English. If you don't make your coding syntactically correct, the browser engine will display your file with flaws, due to the lack of attention you put into making it, and a validator will tell you where you went wrong. Our brains tell us where we go wrong with English and because we read in almost the same way, if it is wrong to us, then 90% of the time, it will be wrong to others.

I fully understand that there aren't native or fluent English speakers here, but you can do your best.

Just remember, this is a professional forum, not a chat room.

I failed English, but that's not an excuse for me.

I know I make a few mistakes here and there, I also notice when other people do, just like in the post above that Shooting Star made, with using "you're" instead of "your" as well as a few grammatical errors but I am not going to complain unless it honestly makes no sense at all.

The basis of any communication is that it gets understood. That's it, you could have so many spelling mistakes or grammatical errors, but if the message can still be interpretted correctly, then you've passed the communication test. People do find those little tidbits annoying, but it's a fact of life that people will make errors, the only thing you could do to improve that is to learn from your mistakes and never be negative when people do criticise you. Just look at it that they actually cared enough to point your errors out, and are trying to be helpful.

Now the question is, why did I fail English?

That's simple for me, I felt that we were not being taught English. Test me on my spelling and grammar and I'd pass, maybe not 100% but it'd be a pass none the less, test me on knowing why an author writes a book in a particular way, and to get inside his head and think like him, I'll fail, because I don't think like others and that's the whole idea of being considered unique. I'd feel if they like writing books, then that's a good enough reason why they would write it or else they would do something else I would think.

I know I've liked computers since the age of 4, so that is why I am involved with computers now. I do have other interests other than computers, but if someone was to think why I chose a career in computers then the obvious answer is because I like working with computers. There might be other reasons why, that could have limited my choices, but if we are to think of all the probable outcomes, we'd be here forever, so that is why I failed English.

You can still be successful none the less, don't ever let anything stand in your way.

I apologise for any spelling and grammatical errors that may arise in this document. That is the work of tiny gremlins that come along and alter it so that nothing will be perfect.


Cheers,


MC

Grammar and spelling? Aha, most members of Astahost aren't English native speaker, right? I think that members just need to post in ways that everyone can understand easily. That's all we need, we have technical discussion here, not language learning.

Do I make any mistake in this post???

I'm sorry if anyone mis-understood me. I did not mean to make my post seem thrashing, I just tend to go on long tangents.

You are all right when you say that as long as people understand, then it is fine. I am just trying to point out that good (not 100%) grammar and spelling helps a lot when communicating.

And I didn't mean it for people to learn English in order to make themselves understood. All I ask, is that you take your time and be appreciative of others reading your post. Some members seem to not take the time and due care to make sure they make sense.

The fact that Astahost's members come from all around the world makes us very much diverse. Some understand things differently in ways that one might consider good or bad. I personally hate the "hacker" jargon because i can barely make out what is being said at all. It is true though, however, that if you're an English speaker, the human mind will be able to interpret the exact word just by knowing the correct placement of the first and last letters of a word while having the middle-letters rearranged. For example:



Understanding the paragraph might take a little longer for your mind to get used to but there is no saying the English speaker will not be able to comprehend it. I know this is getting off topic but as an ending statement, i think Twitch might be right about his sayings. Though, Astahost was never exactly professional, just a little more technical than Trap. Our current mod team has already been extremely lenient with poor English around the forum. There is no such rule that states all members to be English speaking, just that we must arrive in Asta with nothing but the knowledgeable brain, then again, great minds do not always come from people of an English heritage.

Proofread and certified,
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