Welcome to all our new posters (and, for that matter, some not-so-new)! Good to have you here. I've been asked to post something I put up on COT here at On Ice, too. Since it was a specific request from several people, I'll emerge from lurk (I have always tried to respect the theory that if you don't skate yourself, On Ice isn't the place for you to be doing anything but reading) to do so.

I would like to make a plea that when you post on this board (I don't really care about any other board since I'm not trying to read posts anyplace else) you give strong consideration to using initial caps in sentences, apostrophes as necessary, punctuation, and double space between paragraphs. <insert an on-its-knees smiley face here>

You're wondering why this matters--I can just hear you muttering, right? Let me explain, please.

One of the charms of this board is that we have posters of all ages--from junior high and below up through 60's and perhaps beyond. One of the nasty secrets of getting older is that your eyes have a far harder time reading print on the screen than they used to.

Sentences which don't start with a capital letter and don't finish with some punctuation, omitted apostrophes, and interminable paragraphs all make it very very hard reading for those of us who just *might* <cough, cough> be a titch older than 35.

You would probably be surprised at how many older readers and posters are here. We *want* to read what you have to say, we're interested in it--but please meet us halfway! Thanks for keeping that in mind. Now THINK SPRING!!

P.S. Break your post into paragraphs by putting a DOUBLE "enter" between what you just said and what you are about to say. A single "enter" doesn't get the job done. *Patsy goes back into lurk mode now*

Thank you, Patsy. Well said. I also usually lurk but do read the boards daily. Posts that follow basic standards of writing are read. If it's too hard to read, it gets skipped.

Hear, hear. Posting to a board like this isn't the same as Instant Messaging a pal. Thanks for stating the plea so nicely.

hi. i know you said its better to have capitals and evrything but this is a fun site and i will try to use stuff like that but im used to riting like this online, but if its spaced out well then i think even without punctuation that it cant be that hard to read! just a comment

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beks~
"winning isn't everything... wanting to is."

" the only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary"

"It’s not necessarily the amount of time you spend at pracitce that counts; it's what you put into the practice."

I don't think you are anywhere near your 50's yet, so you really do not know what it's like. I remember when I was a kid and my mom would have me thread needles for her and say what good eyes I had. You think it's normal and you will always be like that. You can't quite believe what you are hearing, but I'm sure you can understand that when you say "it cant be that hard" you are actually saying that people are not being honest with you. I assure you we are.

You say "im used to riting like this online", but that should really not be a problem for you at all, since your youth gives you both more physical and mental flexibility.

Yes "this is a fun site" for all of us, and it will continue to be as long as we remain respectful of each other, so please reconsider. It's only one site, and it will give you practice for school

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funny to bring up school. that's my point. we do the proper thing in school all day and it's nice to not have to worry about perfect grammar and such after hours. sure, i'll try to use less short forms and stuff but you probably wont catch me with capitols and new paragraphs very often. sorry.

yeah same!!!!! me and inuk shuk were talking about that we think that weve been sitting around all day in school having to do riting all day all proper and all and on our free time we arent gonna be caught dead riting proper when we dont hafta sorry!

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beks~
"winning isn't everything... wanting to is."

" the only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary"

"It’s not necessarily the amount of time you spend at pracitce that counts; it's what you put into the practice."

well that was kind of rude...all i'm trying to say is that not everyone feels they need ot take the extra time and effort sometimes.

Sorry if that sounded rude it wasn't suppose.. i will try my very hardest to put an effort into it! Did u notice i have capitals???? and punctiation! lol

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beks~
"winning isn't everything... wanting to is."

" the only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary"

"It’s not necessarily the amount of time you spend at pracitce that counts; it's what you put into the practice."

Oh, believe me, we're not expecting perfect grammar!

Some of us with older eyes would like to be able to read ALL the posts we're interested in. Tha's all.

f u cn rd ts tn u cn gt a gd jb

(if you can read this then you can get a good job, I guess the shorthand I learned in the 1970's has been revived, not so hard to read for me, heh)

Anyway, may I suggest that the chatty group set up a "Skaters Conversation" thread, there used to be one (here or iSkater?) and it was full of texting chat, if I recall, the same sort of complaints were made about the non-teenage-skater-lurkers not being able to read anything.


(mmmmm, and skaters who are posting in threads like they're on msn, EVERYBODY reads those discussions here, so be careful what you say)

Not trying to be the grammar police here, just wanting to point out that this illustrates the point. This post was hard to read. (Not as bad as some, but still...) Nobody's going to slam you for writing this way, but be aware that there are people who will simply ignore it or discount what you're saying if it's too hard to read.

Inuk-shuk and 96.23....any chance you can start PM'ing each other instead of having conversations in the various threads? Not meaning to be rude, but for many of us with limited time, it is difficult to have time to read posters input on a thread if there is a conversation going on between 2 people throughout the thread.

As for the punctuation/grammar plea, I completely agree that it is so much easier to read a reply if it is written properly. I am not 50-something, but still greatly appreciate those that make the attempt to use punctuation and capital letters at the beginning of sentences.

Thanks!

And the reason we are going to know you are educated and actually know the rules of spelling and grammar is Don't forget, we don't know you, and, to be extremely rude, posting like that does make you come across as an illiterate child. Which I am quite sure you aren't - so perhaps you could help us think of you as the soon-to-be-graduate that I know you are, rather than as a 10-year-old who has got hold of her father's computer!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

I don’t bother to read a thread that has no paragraphs, no punctuation, no capitals, bad sentence structure, careless spelling and inane short cut words. I don’t tolerate juvenile (I’m not necessarily speaking of the young) posts.

I also don’t click on a subject title that is not clear in its meaning.

I'm the person who asked Patsy to repost her plea here. I've posted here for a long time and found myself being driven away by the sudden influx of teen-speak, text shorthand and generally grammarless and punctuationless posts that seemed to me to be taking over a lot of the threads that I used to find interesting and entertaining. I'm not demanding perfection - I make typos like everyone else - and English is not everyone's first language here, either. We take things like that into consideration.

Yes, I'm a old fogie and my eyes are failing. Yes, this is a fun place. But it's supposed to be fun for EVERYONE and posts that deliberately ignore general rules of grammar and punctuation can be considered rude and insulting to the people who have difficulty reading them.

Behavior should be modified to suit your surroundings. You would not behave the same way in church as you would a a high school dance (or I would hope not, anyway!) nor would behavior that is perfectly accptable at a World Cup Soccer match be accaptable at the opera. Maturity comes when you recognize this fact of life and learn to adapt.

As soon as you log in here and start to post, you have joined a community, a community that gets to know you solely through the written words you post. If you want to be taken seriously, then conforming to the standards of the majority is necessary. And the majority of people here are asking - very politiely - to conform to common rules of language to facilitate understanding and communication among everyone.

Perhaps, if 95.23 and those who feel the same way feel so strongly about hanging on to their exclusionary method of communication, they would feel more comfortable petitioning Adrian for a "Teen Skaters" portion of the On Ice board, which is already for skaters of all ages. Or at the very least, start a thread with that title, so that the dinosaurs and grammar fanatics among us can avoid it.

Lecture over.

blue111moon, thanks. Good post.





Well, then, honey, the rest of us won't be caught dead reading your posts. That's just the way it goes. I see that some have tried to be nice to you, and respond to your ill-typed questions, but if you continue in this vein, that's going to drop off sharply. We can only take so much.

If you want to be taken at ALL seriously here, then you post intelligibly.

Feel free to start a 'teen skaters chat' thread--it's been done before, and as I recall, those that posted on it had lots of fun posting however they pleased, and chatting the day away. The key is that it was restricted to one thread, that the rest of us could (and did) avoid if we so chose. Happy medium, happy posters.

So please....start one and have a blast! Don't get me wrong, we like having teen skaters here--this isn't strictly an adult forum. But we like to be able to interact with everyone on a common level--in a text environment, that common level consists of using more or less proper grammar.

Thanks.

I feel the same way, and have been wondering for a while if we are dealing with a troll or meower situation here.

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I agree Blue, and I also think it's a gret idea for a teen section if desired. Using punctuation and such is another way of being considerate to all posters. Young or mature eyes - posts are simply easier to read when written properly, and I do appreciate the effort made by most posters to do this.

I would also second the suggestion that Inuk-shuk and 96.23 utilize the PM's more often.

OK then. I said i didnt mean to make that rude and that i was going to try to write properly so you dont hafta keep going on about it like i never said anything! I'm trying to use punctuation and things like that so sorry if i offended any of you. ANNNDDD me and inuk shuk already use msn instead of bring personal stuff into these chats... did u notice in one i said we should stop so people wouldn't get mad? So yeah, but let it slide if there are a few mistakes, typos and shortened words, because we are used to writing like that, and so far in this paragraph i tried my hardest.

so sorry
96.23!

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beks~
"winning isn't everything... wanting to is."

" the only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary"

"It’s not necessarily the amount of time you spend at pracitce that counts; it's what you put into the practice."

Hello everyone!

I agree with everbody on this topic. I think it is much easier to read things when they are properly written and well spaced, however i do agree with 96.23??? and Inuk shuk because we can't expect them to do everything you've asked for! Even I don't do that, i will sometimes forget to capitalize some things or a comma or two and everyone will so, i think people should take in consideration how they write but not so much that it's going to take them twice as long to write what they wanted to just because they are trying to write carefully but take a few seconds to try to make your messages a little more clear and easier on the eyes!!!! Just my comments!
and 96.23 it was very nice of you to try harder! thanks i'm sure evryone will appreciate it!!

bye!

My dear, there's no need to register a new name simply to pat yourself on the back and agree with yourself.

Cease and desist.

Oh, and if you want to chat with yourself and waste bandwidth, do it somewhere else. Take your multiple personalities elsewhere, or risk being banned.

ok, I know(or I hope) that you guys aren't trying to make us feel young and stupid and unwanted, but that's what it's turning out to be. All i've been trying to say is that for some of us it's nice not to have to be proper all of the time, but we will make an extra effort to accomodate everyone's wishes. I don't know about other people but i liek to think that i am amoung peers here but right now it's definatly feeling like anyone who isn't or has trouble with all of the english rules is being looked down upon. We're all a skating community and this issue seems to be ripping two generations apart. I don't know what else to say other than I will try to be more correct in my grammar, spelling, ect.

And as for 96.23?? and I, thanx, we do PM and use MSN. I thought you guys weren't reading our posts anyway..? Well, sorry for offending you guys, it's not intentional at all. But we're not going to stop coming here, we're not going to stop being ourselves, we'll try to cut back on the "useless" messages though. That's all..I'm sure i'll get knocked by most of you guys for this post but it's my opinion which is something i thought this site (and being an intelligent human being) is all about.

Hiya,

I agree with inuk shuk, I already apologized for my what came out as "rude" comments. This will be my last post in this thread because I can tell you guys don't want any of my comments. And even if I've made a mistake or two forgive me because i tried my best, and I have been making efforts to make my comments in the last while grammatically correct and so. Also i know i shouldn't have made rude remarks but it's not nice to do them back when i apologized!!

We didn't mean to intentionally try to offend anybody with our messages, and sorry if it turned out like that. And sometimes threads will lead off into another direction and it's hard to keep on topic sometimes but we will try to restrain it in msn and pms! And ofcourse we will be still posting! maybe not as much personal stuff that can be kept into msn but let it slide if a little slips through please! And I'm also sure i will get comments about how everyone still wants me to leave but o well what can I do?

thanx and sorry,

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beks~
"winning isn't everything... wanting to is."

" the only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary"

"It’s not necessarily the amount of time you spend at pracitce that counts; it's what you put into the practice."

No, nobody wants you, or Inuk Shuk (interesting screen name, by the way - where is it from?), or anybody else who spells "skating" with an 8, to leave. Rather the reverse - we value your comments, which is why we want you to help us old f*rts with failing eyesight by writing them more clearly so we can understand what you're saying! I know it's easy to make typoes (typos?) or spelling mistakes when you're typing fast, and one doesn't always bother to correct them, but all we ask is that you don't do it deliberately!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!