I see The Puntuation Police are back on the beat
And the squad is growing daily.
The biggest thing I notice is that some 17 yr old kid is always getting jumped on about it and others (guys who I know are a lot older and hold a higher ranking in the VMX community and would tell you to fork right off) don't have a thing mentioned to them.
Michael's not the only one that's been singled out at all. A number of others, most notably Freaky have been picked on for their lazy posting, and not just by me. I singled Freaky out (
which inspired some sharp debate between us)because he's shown that he's more than capable of producing an articulate and well punctuated posting but more often than not his posts were bordering on indecipherable. You've probably noticed that his posts have improved beyond expectation in recent times. Michael's the product of the 'texting' generation where punctuation and sentence structure are bypassed in the interest of a quick text. He's not the only one, amongst others a prominent Viper identity is guilty of the same crime. Knowing that these guys are quite articulate, its easy to dismiss their posts as lazy and with not caring about the reader.
I tutor HSC and Uni students in essay writing and and I've observed that 'text' style language as displayed in Michael and others posts is fast becoming the new accepted standard for written communication. It may be OK for a quick text to the mate to see if he wants to go for a beer but to present a 3000 word essay on business law with basic spelling mistakes, hardly any punctuation and paragraph long sentences is just plain disasterous. That's why the parents call me in, as the kids themselves can see nothing wrong with it until it's pointed out to them.
We don't have to produce posts Ernest Hemingway would be proud to call his own on the forum. All we need is a little bit of respect for those expected to read them by using capitals and punctuation where needed and take a bit of care with spelling. It's not that hard.
