HN Explorer

Aak HN: Spelling erors in a blpg post?

3 points by pkghost ↗ HN
For me, spelling errors can ruin an author's credibility. Forget, for a moment, the ubiquity of spell checkers. That an author wouldn't take the five or ten minutes necessary to reread and correct obvious mistakes indicates a carelessness that I can't help but suspect permeates their thinking as well as their expression of thought. (Remembering spell checkers makes the inattention that much more perplexing.)

I grant there is not always a case for the language harpy to nag: one or two misspelled words do not necessarily indicate a deficient intellect; improper punctuation is irksome, but not sufficient per se to indict the author's ideas; ESL authors can't be expected to know MLA-approved grammar, punctuation, and style backwards and forwards (nor can all native speakers, even), et cetera. But when I come across an HN link that's littered with misspellings, I wonder what readers are thinking.

How do you react when you see a pattern of misspelling on a blog?

8 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 31.5 ms ] thread
mogston
Just tell the author, politely...no harm in that.

I'd be thankful if someone did this to me (actually they did last week - i'd been staring at the screen that long that i let one through!)

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
pbhjpbhj
There is always some improvement to make - for example it's commonly considered proper to expand abbreviations on first use, or that "language harpy" is likely to be opaque to those unfamiliar with Greek myth, or that foreign words per se should be italicised, et cetera.

Personally _if_ the meaning is clear then I don't object unless that person is requesting review or they're being pedantic about other's writing.

I've never heard of the MLA before but a brief glance suggest that they provide a style guide for scholarly writing, not for blog posts.

pkghost
Thanks for the pointers -- didn't realize rich formatting was available.

I think you misunderstand me. I find it odd that an author would expect me to take his/her writing seriously if he/she doesn't take it seriously enough to run a spell check, and I'm curious how others feel about the subject.

Also, I don't appreciate being called a pedant. I asked the question earnestly and politely. If you think I am a snob or was rude, tell me directly rather than correcting my own writing in ways that I specifically excluded from the scope of my judgement.

pbhjpbhj
No problem.

>Also, I don't appreciate being called a pedant. [...]

I didn't. I said that I don't object to spelling errors unless I feel the author is being pedantic about the writing of someone else, then I _have_ to!

You made no errors that I spotted I simply pointed out a couple of nuanced alterations in style that I would make.

However, I do feel you're a pedant in this respect but don't see that as an especially deleterious characteristic. Pedantry has it's place.

I don't think you're being a snob or being rude but I do think that spelling on a blog is not as important as your post suggested it should be - it would depend on the blog to some extent of course.

rick_2047
Well it is my opinion that if it weren't for spell checks many of the authors wouldn't be able to correct all there typos. What happens is, that once you write you work you are fairly confident that it is right. Thus even if you read and reread it there will still be some typos left because your mind is tuned to the fact that what is written is right. It takes a lot of effort and practice to get over this habit.

(We run a self published magazine at our college. It is a rule amongst us that nobody will edit there self written article even for typos for just this reason. We have seen it happen many times that people are not very good at editing there self written articles just because the above mentioned reason).

pkghost
Certainly, I've fallen victim to the same assumption, even going so far as to read words that aren't there in my text simply because I expect them to be. But my question was directed specifically at spelling; what do you think of authors who don't even run spell check?

(If you run a paper, you might be interested to know that "their articles" implies ownership, and thus describing them as self-written isn't necessary.)

seven
I ownly mind thos errorrs that could have been detekted by an automatick check.

The other won are to easy too overcook, a lease buy at non naive speaker like me.