This is quite recent but I’ve been browsing Lemmy a bunch lately and quite often I see extreme grammatical errors.

I’m not talking about like, incorrect stylistic choices between commas and dashes, or an improper use of ellipses or missing commas or incorrect use of apostrophes in its/it’s or in multiple posessive articles or just plain typos or any nitpicky grammar nazi shit like that, but just basic spelling specifically.

It’s one thing when you can’t spell some pretty uncommon words and you’re too lazy to look it up and/or use autocorrect, but it’s a completely different league to misspell very basic words, very recently I saw someone spell “extreme” as “extream” which is just kind of baffling, I actually can’t even imagine how one would make such a mistake?

And it’s not been an isolated thing either, I’ve seen several instances like that lately.

Am I going crazy? Is it just me?

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I no phone gudz mane.

    No, but really typing on a glass slab sucks. The software sucks ass too and seemingly no OEM is interested in improving it or trying something new.
    Android’s spellchecker sucks at handling 2 languages at once so I gotta turn it off and rely on the keyboard’s auto correct.
    Both FUTO and Heliboard insist on not correcting obvious misspellings or change correct words to nonexistent ones.

    I’m convinced we’ve gotten the maximum we can out of the touchscreen QWERTY format. EIther we get a new Blackberry KeyOne style device or we get some stenography-like software innovation that converts vibes to words, I dunno.

    • coaxil@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      3 months ago

      I am pretty sure android is getting worse at correcting input and also changes words after the fact as you type, coupled with phones are awful to type on, results in this fucking mess we get now days.

    • starlinguk@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 months ago

      Big tech realised that touch screen keyboards are cheaper to manufacture (develop) than physical keyboards and persuaded everyone that touch screen keyboards are better. Absolutely not. Screw touch screen keyboards.

  • HiddenLychee@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    3 months ago

    I’ve noticed mine got worse for some reason in the last five years. So many words that I’ve had no issue spelling I’ve lost confidence in spelling and need to look it up. Happened around COVID for me, not sure why.

    • Flagstaff@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      3 months ago

      Brain damage from stress lol. I find myself occasionally typing “there” instead of “their” and have to catch myself. I always reread what I type before sending so I fix it before sending, but I never made this mistake before. Somehow, over the years, probably from stress of various kinds (and this dates back to pre-COVID), I began to process language aurally and less visually, so if it sounds close enough and I’m not really thinking about what I’m typing, I’ll use the wrong word.

      I’ve never typed “payed” before, though, and I see that across Reddit increasingly. It’s just crazy that that and “could/would of” have exploded over recent years.

        • Flagstaff@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          I think of words’ pronunciation as I type them, with no literal audio/particular human voice or vocal range. How do you envision words upon/right before typing?

          • pleasestopasking@reddthat.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            3 months ago

            There are people who don’t have an inner monologue, they just think in abstraction. I have a friend who is like this. She tried to explain it to me and I just couldn’t even comprehend what a paradigm shift it is from how I thought all brains at a basic level worked.

            It’s like when I learned that some people actually see images when they “picture something in your mind’s eye.” Had no idea that was literal.

            • scintilla@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              3 months ago

              That’s crazy to me. I constantly am talking to myself. Like a full on dialog with different “perspectives” and all that jazz.

  • Bustedknuckles@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    3 months ago

    My mobile spelling has gotten to be garbage because my phone keyboard autocorrects Sometimes and I’ve gotten lazy about Swype/deleting mid-word mistakes. My pen/paper and also physical keyboard spelling remains persnickety

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        I turned off autocorrect because it was changing valid words into other words. Having an obvious typo is preferable to changing the meaning completely, which happened enough times for me to notice.

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      my phone corrects “the” to “Tue”. Thanks phone, exactly what I was going for apparently

      • Subtracty@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        3 months ago

        My phones autocorrect has been garbage recently. I feel like a few years ago, it was much better at predicting what I meant to type, and I could easily edit on mobile using the suggested corrections. But now it is worse. Even with words or names I use all the time.

        • tetris11@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          3 months ago

          Ditto. My older phone (Lineage 17) doesn’t have this problem, compared to my current (Lineage 20)

          • scintilla@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            3 months ago

            How long have you had it? it took my current keyboard 3ish months to be as good as gboard which I had been using for years.

            • tetris11@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              3 months ago

              I dont have the learn as you type features on, I just use the stock keyboard with stock dictionary

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    English spelling rules, and some vocabulary and grammar, were mostly crystallized around the end of the 16th century, with the form kind of arbitrarily chosen to be (mostly) from southeast England.

    English grammar rules and some spelling were asserted by fiat, by linguists who wanted English to be “more Latin.”

  • steeznson@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    Could be people using a second language like others have mentioned. Another thing could be British vs US english. Webster changed how words were spelt in the early 20th centry to make them more phonetic for Americans, i.e. “colour” -> “color”

    • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      I’m also second language lol, I’d never do this, I learned how to write English before I knew how to speak it.

      • steeznson@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 months ago

        Yeah counterintuitively there are a lot of people who learn English as a 2nd language who have better grammar than native speakers because they actually learn the rules.

  • x00z@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    3 months ago

    Most of the people you interact with online aren’t native English speakers.

    • 3xBork@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      3 months ago

      I get the feeling it’s the native speakers who are the worst offenders. The ones using English as a second language at the very least made an effort to learn the language.

      • x00z@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 months ago

        Lmao.

        What an awful individual.

        Not to mention I wrote my comment before anyone else.

  • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    “Extream” is an archaic spelling found in dictionaries, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this was just autocorrect/swyping. It also seems like 90% of the usages come from HumanPenguin or 1984.

  • thatradomguy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    It’s not just spelling, even online people don’t even bother using grammar. They literally stuff 4 different sentences in one line without using commas or periods. It’s maddening, honestly.

      • hedge_lord@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        This dog murdered my family okay it is a really bad dog and it’s evil and bad but also really cute so idk if I can hold a grudge against it but what it can hold against me is the gun that it has pressed to my temple because it has forbidden me from using any punctuation in this run-on paragraph

  • P00ptart@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    3 months ago

    Spelling? I’m not worried about spelling when it’s been acceptable to murder grammar in public for 20 years.

    • sga@lemmings.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      I don’t know what is concerning, me knowing how to read this, or being able to read this even when I am not from a sms generation (not that i am very youung, but where i live, sms was very expensive, so many people did not message untill we had internet based messengers)

  • WandowsVista@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    originally read the title as “people’s spending” so I uh… I guess we should add reading comprehension to the list of things people (me) are bad at

    imo some of the drivers for today’s terrible grammar and spelling stem from a “rush to reply” e.g. people commenting “frist!”

  • gnu@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    3 months ago

    It’s not a recent thing, but I would say there has been a decline over the last decade or so. Not only does it seem like spelling and grammar are getting worse but I feel it is much more likely these days to find comments defending improper English rather than correcting it.

    I saw someone spell “extreme” as “extream” which is just kind of baffling, I actually can’t even imagine how one would make such a mistake?

    Maybe they had just come from dealing with large quantities of paper? Or enlarging a bunch of holes?

    • 3xBork@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Anti-intellectualism has been on the rise for decades and spelling gets worse? I am shocked I tell you!

      Also: inb4 the “language evolves!” crowd arrives.

      • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 months ago

        So true. People are likely being fucked up by poor autocorrect algos, as I noticed even mine messing up and turned it off outright, because I blind type like 89wpm on my phone anyway so I’m fine without it. Then they’re defending it like ignorant fools that they are, reasoning backwards and perpetuating anti-intellectualism

        • 3xBork@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          One could also argue that language degrades. Just a matter of perspective. Evolution implies it’s good, but a lot of this evolution is little more than losing language features or clarity.