The Doll Forum

Incognito wrote:Spelling actually should have been brought up. Its here now, so lets not sweep it under the carpet because it too is an issue that can be avoided with just a smidge of effort.

As long as the spelling is reasonable enough that the words are understandable, that seems to me sufficient. (As others have stated, not everybody has a convenient spell checker on their computer.) However, the spelling in some posts is so atrocious that many sentences are incomprehensible. I have therefore amended the original post with some words to that effect.

Non of the spelling or sentence structure realy bothers me but being a natural speedreader it does make me stop and wonder sometimes. The worse one for me to read was my Grandmother, who spelled everything phoneticly and could write 10 pages at a setting.

An ex colleague had an example of an email from when he was at university. Unfortunately I don't recall the exact wording, but a misplaced or missing comma caused him to arrive for a lecture exactly a day late. The lecturer concerned agreed that the email was wrong.

The question then arises, why was he the only one who arrived a day late? The reason seems to be that nobody reads the content of emails past the forst line. Everybody else went to the lecturer in person to ask about when it was. That is fine when everyone is in the same place, but the costs of such miscommunication in other circumstances can be large.

On this forum, we rely on text and pictures, so it is worth expending some effort in making them understandable.

f80man wrote:Non of the spelling or sentence structure realy bothers me but being a natural speedreader it does make me stop and wonder sometimes. The worse one for me to read was my Grandmother, who spelled everything phoneticly and could write 10 pages at a setting.

Ha! I know the feeling. There is one particular woman on another forum that I go to who always writes an essay when posting. I read one of her posts one time, but never again. Now I simply skip her posts and read the ones below and above. Many times people don't even post after her because they won't read her post and respond to it, subsequesntly the thread dies.

jonnydisco wrote:so, is this a management decision? or just your observation/wishes?

I'm curious if miss spellings or grammatical errors, or, forbid boring posts, will be corrected by managment?

or is this something you plan to do on your own? "tidy up the place"

or will the offender be sent notice to straighten up on the spelling?

Heh, the answer is pretty much hiding in your questions. Just imagine who would be mad enough to read all posts and correct any bad typo there might be, or if a post should be in capslock, who would be crazy enough to re-type it in small print ? Who would be crazy enough to pm all members about any mistake there might be, when life is so short ? Talking about grammar, it would need someone being 101% perfect at it himself/herself, which 101% of persons aren't.
Everhard asked for other opinions about it before it was posted here. The idea is pretty easy, and the main question is do we need this or not ? No, technically, we don't, because if you're bad at English, it won't help, if you don't care, you don't care. But for those who never thought about it or want to improve posts, it also doesn't hurt.
Reading a post, you get a very fine feeling for what's wrong with the post if it's ugly spelling. If people do sentences that sound like "other language with English vocab", it's just they don't know better. No problem. If people spell phonetically then "its just thay don't knoh bettuh", no problem. But if someone submits text that looks like he's a weirdo, most likely he is a weirdo, because he just doesn't try. In the end, this only tells something about the poster, so this is really just advice in the own interest of those who need it (but likely don't care to read). For example, if someone starts a thread "advice", just posts a link and says "care 2 xplain", this would be a candidate for etiquette advice needed.

Everhard wrote:

TheConnoisseur wrote:How about making a rule where there is a size limit- say 800 x 800 or whatever
so we do not have to wonder if we are doing bad.
Maybe that way it would be OK to show pictures in a thread.

Sounds like a good idea. Is 800 x 600 a sensible limit for someone with an old computer, dial up connection, and a low-res screen? (Somewhere there is some statistical info about cmputers used by forum members...) I understand Midiman's point about progressing with technology. I just don't want to make the forum unusable by someone who has an old but adequate computer, which he has to chuck away just because people ignore basic rules of good communication, which people often do by assuming that what they see is the same as what everyone else sees. (I don't know what the answer is to that one.)

I'm very much in agreement with this one (as you might have thought, since I started a thread about it in another subforum).
A lot of people (including me ) use a 1024 pixels wide screen. Big pics make threads really unreadable.
Actually I think there should be active moderation on bigger pics (i.e. that moderators who notice a bigger sized pic edit the post).

The thing is: I like seeing pics of dolls, but if the pic is too big a) I can't see it on my screen b) I can't read the lines in one glance, I have to scroll sideways to read post line by line. That's REALLY annoying.

flavortang wrote:Everyone is offended about everything nowadays. I'm offended that people are offended. I'm thinking about calling a lawyer.

That offends me!

No, seriously though... I suggest people to use FIREFOX!!!! because it has a built in spell check application. The downside of Firefox is that if you are like me and you've installed the U.S. version of Windows but you don't live in the U.S, Firefox will force U.S. spelling. I.E. Color instead of colour, harbor instead of harbour, labor instead of labour, etc.

Firefox will also drastically increase animated gif's loading and displaying time, plus it is the only browser to display an animated gif correctly. For example, a gif that has 25 frames at one frame per 1/25 seconds would slow down on other browsers. Not on Firefox.

Guys like Professor Sakai (Japan) and Blackbear (Russia) can make themselves understood, so it seems to me that those of us who live in English-speaking countries have no excuse for creating unreadable content.

Smegma wrote:The downside of Firefox is that if you are like me and you've installed the U.S. version of Windows but you don't live in the U.S, Firefox will force U.S. spelling. I.E. Color instead of colour, harbor instead of harbour, labor instead of labour, etc.

I live in England, but I prefer US spelling. I feel it is simpler and easier to read, especially for an international readership. Incidentally, Firefox did have a built in spell checker, but it went away a couple of years back. (Do I need to do something to turn it back on?)

Everhard wrote:Guys like Professor Sakai (Japan) and Blackbear (Russia) can make themselves understood, so it seems to me that those of us who live in English-speaking countries have no excuse for creating unreadable content.

Smegma wrote:The downside of Firefox is that if you are like me and you've installed the U.S. version of Windows but you don't live in the U.S, Firefox will force U.S. spelling. I.E. Color instead of colour, harbor instead of harbour, labor instead of labour, etc.

I live in England, but I prefer US spelling. I feel it is simpler and easier to read, especially for an international readership. Incidentally, Firefox did have a built in spell checker, but it went away a couple of years back. (Do I need to do something to turn it back on?)

Actually, thanks to a PM, I've managed to fix the problem by simply adding the dictionary to firefox. Tools->Options...->Content->Languages->Choose button.
To turn on spell check: Tools->Options...->Content->Advanced->General->Check the "Check the spelling as I type" box.

Smegma wrote: Incidentally, Firefox did have a built in spell checker, but it went away a couple of years back. (Do I need to do something to turn it back on?)

YES and spanich, english translator

Smegma wrote:To turn on spell check: Tools->Options...->Content->Advanced->General->Check the "Check the spelling as I type" box.

This was already set, but it does not work on my system. (I even tried changing language temporarily.)

I propose, that posters should clearly write in the title of the post, what subject is in the post.

Example:

Instead of: "Huh Huh, my Barbarella arrived"

Write: "Huh Huh, my Barbarella arrived (WM doll 163, Face 33)"

Katka wrote:I propose, that posters should clearly write in the title of the post, what subject is in the post.

Example:

Instead of: "Huh Huh, my Barbarella arrived"

Write: "Huh Huh, my Barbarella arrived (WM doll 163, Face 33)"

Now that's something I would heartily agree with. People sometimes post pages and pages of text and pictures without saying what kind of doll they have. Eventually they are persuaded to divulge this information - but it's like getting blood out of a stone!

It reminds me a little bit of watching the local TV news here in the UK. The presenter will say: "A man's body has been found in woods only yards from a busy main road. The area has been cordoned off and forensic experts are on the scene." They go on and on for ages in this vein and I'm yelling at the telly: "Where, where, where?!" "It matters so much to me where this happened, and you won't tell me!"

The "huh huh" makes me laugh as well. I often see interjections like that on modern social media and message boards, and I'm thinking to myself: "I've never actually heard anybody say that. How are you meant to pronounce it?" Another one is is "Ha!" What's that all about? What does it sound like? In what circumstances would you use it? Why do I never hear it in my daily life?

This is a little pet peeve of mine. It's not breaking any rules. It's not rude. It's not improper grammar. But, I get annoyed when people always, always, always finish a post with the same exact closing, as if it was a trademark. It reads like a form letter to me and sounds dispassionate and insincere. This is just my opinion so don't feel inclined to throw rotten tomatoes at me. Have a great day everyone....

With "Huh Huh" (pronounced like english "who who") little german childs greet their parents (or parents their little childs) = "hallo hallo"