Thread Title Typos

[lemit]

Does it bother anybody else that there several threads with typos in their titles? Isn't that something you'd want to get right? I sure try to.

 

Or, have I become the old guy waving a rake at the kids on my lawn? I have the age, minimally, and I probably have the temperament, so I suppose I should accept either answer.

 

Thanks.

 

--lemit

[pamela]

hahah! what a visual!

yes, it bugs me too.But dear lemit, i must let it go, allowing for the small imperfections, that are present in all of us. It is the book and not its cover that holds the key to further knowledge amongst these threads;)

[sanctus]

And also I would have the power to correct typos in thread titles, but if not requested by the thread starter I think it would be wrong (assuming also thatI actually recognize the typo ;-) )

[lemit]

So I'm not the only one waving a rake?

 

--lemit

[Tormod]

Look at it as free advertising. It helps people who can't bother to spell find us when they look for sciense, machnies, hypothises and evlution in Goggle.

[lemit]

Ah, well, I see what kind of leadership we have here. Besides waving a rake, I'm also shouting in the wilderness and doing something into the wind. Thanks for the promise that nothing will improve.

 

--lemit

[freeztar]

Ah, well, I see what kind of leadership we have here. Besides waving a rake, I'm also shouting in the wilderness and doing something into the wind. Thanks for the promise that nothing will improve.

 

--lemit

 

Improvement in people's spelling is not the job of the leadership here. :D

We happily correct such errors, but as Sanctus pointed out, it would be rude, or at least presumptious, to edit a thread title if the user has not requested a change.

 

Otherwise, we have the opposite "rake crowd" yelling at us for editing their posts. :)

 

If it really bothers you, send me a PM with links to the offending threads and I will contact the people who started them to make sure it is ok to correct their typo.

 

Of course, Tormod raises a very interesting and valid point...

[Tormod]

Ah, well, I see what kind of leadership we have here. Besides waving a rake, I'm also shouting in the wilderness and doing something into the wind. Thanks for the promise that nothing will improve.

 

I am dead serious! You won't believe the list of misspellings I stare at in our web statistics... :)

 

But if you want to call that bad leadership, I guess we can just close down the site and call it the day. Good night.

[lemit]

I think I may have misread your post. I'm not sure how that could happen. It was written so clearly.

 

No insults, except of the sarcastic kind, were intended. You know, I would like to see some of the stuff you have to wade through if that could be arranged. I love the slapstick--but sometimes unintentionally beautiful--in language. As I become less and less mobile, I suspect I will appreciate language more and more. So bring it on.

 

--lemit

[CraigD]

Does it bother anybody else that there several threads with typos in their titles? Isn't that something you'd want to get right? I sure try to.

I’m bothered by misspellings, in posts in general and in titles specifically, especially egregious ones, such as in 18453 :doh:

 

Hypography’s mods and admins, I included, feel responsibility and take pride in hypography’s appearance and content. At the same time, we want hypography to be a relaxed, fun forum for exchanging ideas, so don’t want to needlessly chastise folk for minor misspellings and grammatical errors.

 

There is a site rule reading

Watch your spelling

It is generally a good idea to write clearly and edit out spelling mistakes. We encourage everyone to write as well as they can. For a lot of our users English is a second language and for them a misspelling may make your entire message unreadable. If you are among those who do not command English very well, please try to do your best

While a clear admonishment to spell rightly, it’s also clear that it gives credit for effort. There is an infraction, of the mildest impact, for “Inappropriate Spelling” – on the rare occasions we’ve used it, it’s been to discourage outright netspeak resembling 12-key text message chatter, text completely eschewing capitalization or punctuation, and text of that ilk, which is arduous to read to unreadable.

 

My advice to the spelling challenged is that they either do what I do, composing messages in the word processor/text editor of their choice which includes a nice spelling/grammar checker, then copy-and-paste them into hypography’s reply to thread form, or take advantage of that form’s built-in spell checker (the button appearing to the upper right). This latter requires the install of a free application, with the added benefit of adding a selection to the rightclick options of most browsers to allow it to check spelling in any plain html webpage form.

 

On a deep level, I’m of the opinion that minor spelling errors are to be encouraged – or at least tolerated – as they arguably drive the process of language drift, without which we might still be writing Middle English and have divers extra characters in place of “th” and other modern digraphs.

 

That said, the enjoyment of hypography having as much to do with not having one’s sensibilities assailed by minor misspellings as not having to worry about making them (a minor paradox, perhaps) I’ve fixed the title of 18453.