Well, I agree, that sometimes it could be made much easier to understand a post if the author invested a minute more to correct his/her spelling and grammar. But I do believe, that for most people here, the reason is that they didn't get a lot of English education (I see that because some people who speak other languages that I know, still use "their" word order etc.). I like the international touch very much about Astahost and I wouldn't like those, who didn't get the best English education, to stay outside. Of course, we shouldn't become a Babeltower, but I think, a little bit more acceptance is appropriate.
The question remains: What should be done?
I mean, those who write bad English are punished hard enough by the fact that know one will understand them. Of course we could put up a little tutorial on how to assemble facts and maybe link some language resources, but I doubt that this would help.
My proposition would be to kindly remind writers of their mistakes and giving advice. Since writing more will be rewarded, I think that most of us would not mind the extra effort. This way the users here would not only learn more about programming but also get better at English, which sounds promising to me.
Maybe a little BB-Code for spelling remarks would be apropriate.
For example:
--
Lalala .. Blind text, actual reply to post
[spell]it's spelled "appropriate", ruben[/spell]
--
This way, spelling remarks could be easily skipped by native speakers, but those who are still learning would gain something.

What do you say?

I am a native english speaker. I live in a place where english is used commonly. I know, common American stereotype (especially from Britain) calls for Americans being really pointy. We even have our own lingo, saying "like" after every two words. But all that doesn't matter.

I do agree, english is an art. Except not the art you're thinking. Oftentimes, people here believe that using hard works like aforementioned makes your paper "decent." Granted, this works in college essays but normal people won't understand it. Why can't we just say previously mentioned? And why are our sentences so long?

Syntax doesn't make a paper good. Professional really doesn't mean breath-taking. Art breeds emotion. I find that good papers touch on people's hearts. But that's just my opinion.

I think it is perfect. If we could some how reproduce the note tag, but apply a few changes, like the colour and the actual message, then it would be perfect.

Right, shooting star, I am going to tear my hair out in a minute.

English is like an art, as it allows us to express ourselves through words. Art allows us to express ourselves through images.

    [/tab]If you ask me to believe a native english speaker won't understand the word as simple as afore-mentioned - then one shouldn't claim to be a native english speaker in the first place. This doens't even fall into your so-called category of flowery language - although it's usually classified as decent english.

[tab]Moreover - one prime aspect of our board - that most of you miss out on, is that we've explicitly stated in our TOS that we intend to build a rock-solid technical knowledge-base and for that we're seeking talented members. Our tag-line is Where Talent Fuels Hosting - and talent, whatever you may be endowed with, has to be expressed properly in order to be recognized as talent. If you are unable to express yourself in a clear-cut manner, then your talent will simply go unrecognized. Hence we stress so much on making posts here using full english sentences. Even our hosting is mostly given out to people who can at least summarize their thoughts in a logical progression and lay it out in a manner that is conducive to easy understanding by the masses.

    [/tab]While this might seem like an elitist point of view to you - I'm sorry to say, that's how it IS. We're not interested to have our forums filled with thousands of lines of absolutely meaningless junk consisting of nothing but, hehe, haha, lol, like etc. Moreover, our board is primarily meant to cater to an English speaking audience - so bad english isn't really an excuse here.

[tab]As for the lighter side of life - there's always Trap17 - where posting rules are far more relaxed - where you wouldn't face scorn about poor english. That is why people who feel a little strangled in here are always advised to go join Trap17. I should point out that this makes us loose a LOT of new members as well as in terms of post COUNT - but we're entirely happy with whatever we have. At least any newcomer trying to locate information on a particular topic can do so with extreme ease - as it has been pointed out earlier by many of our members.

Because that is the way the world works, and for me, by increasing your intellect with using a more varied vocabulary makes you a more rounded person, and less narrow-minded.

We often make our sentences long to include as many points as possible. Once that is achieved, we continuously reinforce those points with adverbs and other long descriptions, as true thought can't be physically written down in an explicit way.

Errrm.. Ahhemmm...Did someone say that rules are strict over here and at trap17 the rules are relaxed!
Oh! I am sorry for this, I did'nt notice that this was said by Our ADMIN

Anyways Jokes apart, I will say that Astahost is a place, where all talented people are posting and when I say talented, they all are talented enough to understand what is expected from them and if it is about making posts by using punctuations and using correct grammer then there is no problem with that!
Infact, the people who are stressing on the use of the correct grammer and punctuation are the ones who understand that not each and everyone over here is from a english speaking country, so they do ignore these small mistakes. But, when someone is making sentences which will not make any sence if punctuations won't be used, then they will have to point out that member over there.

And Mr. Admin, if you are talking about Trap17 and its rules then please follow this link (In naughty mood today):
http://www.trap17.com/forums/page-2-t31236-s10.html

Quite surprisingly, around five million people here can't read past the eighth grade level. Studies have shown that here. One thing I find that causes that is our traditional relay television watching. Television takes our attention off things. We're most likely doing something else. And also, people that represent themselves on TV are really ignorant, trying to assign blame to others. But nevertheless, english is our primary language. Not understanding "SAT words" still doesn't change that fact.


Not really elitist. "L33t sp33k" would imply the annoying use of symbols and numbers and pretending you're better than everyone else. Plus, an elitist board is generally built up of hacker wannabes, which really isn't the case here. I don't see astahost as elitest, rather just a little bit pretentious. Please don't take offense to this, I don't mean it that way. Grammar is important. People do look to that as a first impression in judging your work. I just meant that grammar shouldn't be the know-all-end-all concept of professionality. There should be more to that too.


I don't feel like an outcast here. I kind of like it at astahost. But I don't think everything should be layed out as a gradual progression. Digressing is a tool that most professional writers will do. Most books do digress. They don't just choose a point and walk with it throughout the novel. Digression sometimes brings good points into a discussion. It takes things people can relate with and overall makes everything more memorable. In fact, the use of humor grasps a lot of attention by your audience. It's a great start to any sentient post. It leads your readers to your thoughts. It expands upon everything. And it can be easily done too. Humor occurs when you connect two unlike things that no one else can believe connectable. Also it might have some truth behind it. See how this article uses humor to make a thoughtful point:

about angry asian man:
http://angryasianman.com/about.html

well I for one can admit when it comes to writing or typing I suck at it. Hard to tell when to put this "," or this "." in the right spot of course I barely use ";" that I can't remember what its used for. To me if you give it the effort and take your time with it. then people will understand what you are saying.

I must admit that I haven't read this entire thread, but I shall post here anyways. I have to admit that, although I personally pride myself on proper grammer, I haven't always corrected my grammer or spelling when posting here. Although, contrary to other posts that I did read here before posting, grammer and spelling go a long way to properly explaining the proper way to correct a problem or explaining your point of view.

For those of you who's primary, or native first language, isn't English, I must comend you on your grasp of the language. I personally have grown up with American English as my native tongue and have studied others, to much disappointment and failure, and have found that next to the written versions some asian and middle eastern languages, English is one of the most twisted languages in the world.

Although I digress; to properly explain ones point of view, give directions on how to do something, or explain the more complicated intricacies of how to design a bit of code to do a automatic mailing of a form from a website proper grammer and spelling are a must. Without proper spelling and grammer trying to use an automated translator like the one that can be found at this LINK, supplied by google.com, will not work properly. Also trying to understand what one person means, while trying to figure out what they were trying to spell or say, can give one a headache as pointed out in another post already made here.

To close, please understand that while some may think that spelling and grammer might not be important; to others its not only professional but good manners.

So ends yet another rant by - Logan Deathbringer

Happy Holidays, one and all....

Well, digress as much as you want, fellows, but don't lose the main point:
Keeping Astahost a forum, that is worth to be read. I personally feel that especially tutorials, but also normal threads should be written in a manner, that invites others to research in these forums for information, find the threads and get answers.
This is not possible, if a thread deals mostly with kiddies expressing their amusement with lols and hehes. But on the other hand, certainly everyone agrees that we're still humans and should have a personal level too.
But since this topic should concentrate on the English language and it's proper use, I would like to get back to my recommendation:
Often I notice little spelling mistakes (not common typos, which I would ask everyone to remove by looking at one's text again before submittal) but I don't correct them because I don't want to get on people's nerves etc.
Another thing that occurs to me often is that people, who are too eager to get credits answer my questions without properly reading them. Because they are not so good at English, they don't get the whole point directly and tell me stuff I knew since birth.

It might seem like a too simple solution, but it is a first step, to assign BB-codes to these events, so that one could simply blast misunderstandings with a [misunderstanding] which ends up as "Please read my posting again, you have misunderstood me due to language problems. I ask you to look up words you don't know and try again" or something more polite.
Plus the spelling extension.. I would really like that, also for myself. At the moment I'm relying on Mac OS X integrated spell check, but since I write in German, Swedish and English simultaneously it is set to "Multilingual" and therefore doesn't notice some common mistakes. Others might not have a spell checker at all in their posts. I would really like to get better at English while using the forum. I disagree with all you saying that advanced language is only used to impress peasants, I think it contributes to beauty of writing and it makes it easier for us to read a text fluently (better language leads to better understanding if you don't suck at English and only know the basics).