Judging by appearances

[fredericks]

Just curious - personally, the use of netspeak turns me off like no one's business. I'm not referring to grammar, as I trample it gleefully on a daily basis, but simple sentence construction, punctuation, capitalization, and the "ur" thing. When it comes to casual interactions (Myspace, LJ, AIM, e-mails) if you're in the middle of "first contact" what's your take on what you're reading?

[Poll #829281]

Comments

[livia-daemon.livejournal.com]

I can deal with the "net speak" in text messages or IMs because you have to type quickly, but those are about the only situations. Poor grammar and spelling are fine as I view LJ sort of like a diary - after all, we are not writing theses here.

[libra-dragon.livejournal.com]

Being I usually am at work, I don't have a lot of time to really pay attention and proof what I am saying. So I usually take the situation the person is writing under into consideration. Also like the person above said I see LJ as a diary so I am not picky for proper sentence structure and whatnot.

[darker-one.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the netspeak. It turns me off. And I'm mostly okay with poor spelling, as long as it's not every other word, And while I can excuse most grammatical errors, I do have a few personal pet peeves, such as people who don't know the difference between "their, there, they're" and "it's and its"-- shallow as it sounds, that seals my opinion in someone's intelligence in a heartbeat.

[sternel.livejournal.com]

It's not always so much intelligence, but my opinion on how much they value how they present themselves. I was reading a wank yesterday where a guy was flaming anyone who pointed out his spelling errors were so flagrant and rampant that you couldn't understand his point. He kept whining "but I have a thing, and I'm a really bad speller!" Fine, whatever. You have a condition, you spell poorly, fine. There's no excuse for not spell-checking in this day and age, and if you know you're not good at spelling and you are going to make no attempts to correct it, I'm going to treat your statement with the exact amount of concern you demonstrate.

An occasional typo? Sure. Everyone makes them. But a consistent disregard for your reader means, to me, that your words are not something I need to give a shit about. ::shrug::

[candicelbj.livejournal.com]

That bothers me so. much. And I agree, it's not grammar, because I'm so grammatically incorrect sometimes it's not even funny. But bleh, for instance, this guy I used to be friends with. On AIM, I swear, he typed like this ALL the time "O SO WUT R U GOING 2 DO 2MORROW?" BLEH. I'd just say Omar, call me on the phone please.

Simple curiosity? Spill, what'd someone do. It'd make for funny.

[stormbringer986.livejournal.com]

Netspeak drives me completely insane.

There's this guy who IMs me all of the time, and that's all he ever uses. Whenever his IM window pops up the first thing in my mind is "Oh GOD! Just leave me alone!" I've seriously had to stare at it for 5 minutes trying to figure out what he just said.

[devoosha.livejournal.com]

I use a little of it when I'm texting on the phone, because it's quicker. But if someone is talking to me on an IM, it hurts my eyeballs. The only one that doesn't bother me when they do it is my niece. She's only 13 and I know that it's 'COOL' to her to type like that. But yeah...guys that were trying to hook up (in my pre-Matt days) got nowhere when they netspoke :)

[1x2foralways.livejournal.com]

Awesome poll. Nothing annoys me more than netspeak.

[emily-goddess.livejournal.com]

Almost all netspeak annoys me (except handy abbreviations like "wtf?" and "lol"), but it definitely depends on the degree. The shortenings that are still mostly legible, like "ur" and "wut," make me cringe, but I can deal if I know the person is otherwise an intelligent speaker (If I don't already know the person, I tend to hold it against them - double standard, I know). But then there's the stuff you see on fanfiction.net or MySpace, where almost every word is netspoken to the point that reading it is like deciphering some sort of code ("heres sumfin 2 sho u wat i mean"). That kind of crap just says to me, "I don't give a damn whether or not you can read this; I just wanted to save three seconds of my time." If you're in IM or chat, that's one thing - the faster you can type, the better. But if you're posting in a blog, or an actual profile that's gonna be the face you present to the world, I don't see any justification for typing like you're racing the clock.