Mostly common practice. However it was first created just became habit and it's been passed down through the years. Nobody launched a full-scale grammar revolution, so people stayed as they were.

i more or less agree.  i tend to stick with the basic rules that i was taught way back when, but other than that i couldn't care less.

i always thought MLA format was the stupidest, most tedious thing that anyone ever came up with.

i do agree with what patricito is saynig it is a really smart guament if it were nto for peaople loike him then there would be no hope for the world

Well it's stupid within reason. Obviously if you can't spell and make something unreadable then that's a problem.

in 50 years writing in text language will be normal.

I'd like 2 apple I 4 the job in marketing. Look 4ward tu Cing u soon. <3

I agree that it's not something to get up tight about or snobbish with. Yes, preposition at end and fragment here.

People find it easier to read good grammar and sentence structure, but there is a lot more to a post than just the words. How you write is who you are. It would be terribly boring if everyone wrote the same.

For example, I usually think quite a bit before I speak. I've had some tough chats before on the internet, and one person that I talked with had to wait for 20 minutes before I continued talking, lol. Because of this, for me, it is basically subconscious to use good grammar. When I put a lot of thought into something, I want to make sure it also looks that way. This very post has gone through 2 "drafts", lol.

Telling people to write more.. clearly is like asking them to be someone they're not. If I was asked to stop using good grammar because it wasn't the thing people wanted to see, I would get rather pissed off.

Anyway, that's my long, pointless ramble at one in the morning for you all...

I believe we are taught proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation in our grade schools because this is a standard for the language, and our educators feel as if this standard should not be changed, so that our great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will actually be able to read and understand things that were written in our current day (and before). Think of how much the English language itself has changed and evolved over 1,000 years. That was because for much of that time, there was no standard to follow, or because people were not educated the way they are today (or are just doing what we are doing now, corrupting the language by our own intentions). Indeed, the English of 1,000 years ago more resembles today's Icelandic than modern English. If people are lazy and continue to write everything "text-message style", I feel as if few, if any, people in decades, centuries, or millenia to come will be able to read and understand the standard English that our educators are fighting to preserve. Indeed, "standard" written English is in peril of morphing into "text-talk", just the way Old English morphed into today's English.

This is why there have been no English spelling reforms in a very long time-- people now realize that changing the way we speak or write our language means that it will be foreign to generations of the distant future. (If they are taught that it's "thru", will they be able to understand what "through" means when they see it? etc.)

Other languages are certainly not immune, with French, German, and Japanese increasingly borrowing words and phrases from English. I know that there is even an Academie Française which is trying to set a standard for what is "French". And I'm sure French schoolchildren are still taught the proper French terminology for things now receiving English monikers by the speakers of their own language. If educators and the Academie Française weren't around to keep the French language French, do you reckon it will slowly morph into an English-French pidgin in time to come, and quite unintelligible to the French people of 1,000 years from now?

To me, the biggest reason is respect.

Respect towards the people who are reading your* writing. They are taking the time to read what you have written. Your thoughts are apparently important enough for them to take the time to read, so why would you not feel obligated to make your writing as easy to read as possible? Are your thoughts so important that the reader must be required to decode the bad grammar and punctuation first before being graced with your thinking?

Respect towards the written language. Writing is a fantastic tool that enables unspoken communication. Try to imagine a world without it. Consider also that the written word is more than a means of exchange between minds - it's actually a snapshot of what someone is thinking. We cogitate, we converse, and we move on, but the written exchange harnesses those thoughts. Why would we not respect that by making sure it's as transparent as possible? Lazy grammar/punctuation begs the reader to pay more attention to the words themselves, and less to the thoughts behind the words.


*When I say "you", I don't mean you, Patricio, specifically. I'm just answering in general.

Zarkov wrote on 04/18/11 at 21:40:56:


+1.        

For me the historical text argument has little value. Communicating with each other in the present to me is much more important than being able to read or decipher writings from the past.

I do agree with Patricio that the most important thing is to be able to understand each other, without worrying about the details. But as NStride mentioned, your writing tells something about who you are. Apart from things like dyslexia, consistently making the same 'mistakes' may give others the impression that you are someone:
- who speaks before thinking about what to say and how to say it.
- who is more concerned about expressing himself, than reaching others.
- who isn't willing to learn or correct/change himself.

I'm not saying this is necessarily true, but it can definitely be interpreted by others this way. Of course you can be aware of this and just not care about it (wanting to make a statement, not looking to reach these particular people, etc.). But if you're not aware of this, you might be too self-involved to notice how you come across to others in the first place.

A more detailed remark, which may be something personal (or not):

Patricio wrote on 04/18/11 at 18:42:54:


I do! It doesn't have to be a perfect use of commas, but reading long sentences without them is a true pain   Punctuation gives the reader to chance to breathe once in a while.

By the way, is the title an intentional misspell or are you simply a retard?

I like Goose's "think of the children!" response  

Also, capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse.." and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.."

Lower case "I"?