Why spelling is poor on the internet?

As you already perhaps noticed English is not my mother's language. Despite of it I always strive for correct spelling in my writing. Until last times I was in that belief I have enough sense to be grammatical with that. Of course I haven't such quality as John Taylor or Michel Fortin have. Far from it, we aren't in same weight category. But I thought that my writing is readable and understandable.

EDIT: ...we aren't in same league. Sorry.

Why am I saying this? Because I'm sick and tired of the presence of misspelled words in emails and websites on the internet. You may find different abbrevations, acronyms, -- that's okay, you need to be familiar with these and then you may apply them. What is mainly annoying for me is the non-capitalization and the grammar. I noticed this symptoms nearly everywhere -- I've come across to some blogs that have very bad grammar or even posts in different forums.

This problem does exist apart from which country are you living in.

We have a conversation with one of my friend recently who has a doctorate in linguistics. He blames the messenger and cell phones because people tend to shortened the words or to substitute on purpose some letters when we try to write a message fast, so at then end we get use to write incorrectly in every time. Naturally, writing on the net have the potential to make inaccuracies, there's also chance that there'll be nobody checking our work for grammar mistakes.

How did the flow of the information work in the earlier times?

The majority of us received our bulk information from a printed mediums before the 'information revolution'. By reading a newspaper or magazine you were able to observe the professionalism in their writing. A newspaper or a magazine is a product and they were struggling to keep that standard and hereby the value and prestige of that product -- up to now.

They are able to fit that requirements because of their quality background; professional writers, editors, proofreaders. These qualified person's job is to be expert on grammar, spelling, formatting, style, etc. -- they are receiving their revenue for that activity. They intend to make ensure that you cannot find errors (at least very rarely) in the newspaper available at the newsdealers.

My age group grown up with information sources that were perfect in spelling and grammar -- you may expected the quality in these. At that time people received adequate education about it in schools, too. But time is changing as everything. I' am not meant to form a judgement on the standard of the present education systems -- I only hope that they do everything what may be possible in this object.

I've mentioned the 'information revolution' above. We are living in an accelerated era where you have tremendous source mediums for gaining information; newspapers/magazines, radio channels, tv channels, and the internet. You can read, hear, see different devices to mediate that information what you want. But with the increase of the number of the opportunities the quality of passing of the information did not improve IMHO.

The internet delivers gazilion information -- some of these has quality, some hasn't. Nowadays anyone can start a website, can become a website writer, can become editor -- without any skill and former experience professional writers in the print zone have.

If a website owner has knowledge and talent in writing that is fine. If s/he hasn't it then s/he writes as s/he can. And you need to be able to understand what you read. Another option is to hire a professional writer and editor to ensure the quality. But it needs some amount of money not everyone has on the start.

And there are other people of course who don't lays claim to the quality, at all. They are those who prefer to using the $1-$2 articles because don't want to acknowledge the knowledge and talent of the writer -- for this reason they don't want to pay for the quality what that writer produces.

All of the above explains that grammar mistakes and spelling errors will continue to crop up all over the internet, until some changes in the financial side and mainly in the thinking of people. Maybe, that I have to expect for that change for a long time.

It may be also that I'm too old-fashioned -- I try to take over the changes though. Sure, if I see a website with poor grammar I associate that with the quality of the offered product and don't purchase.

How are you thinking about it?

- Sandor
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"If you wish to persuade me, you must to think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words." (Cicero the Roman)