Literate

[September Wolf]

Can't believe I missed this thread before!!

I'm an English graduate (ooh, a long time ago now!!), and I really hate illitercay in forums - it's just lazy. I have come across posts which I genuinely cannot understand, because they are so poorly written.

Hurrah for people who know how to use punctuation and grammar!  

[Dances_moonfairy]

I love coming to a forum (ours) where I can actually understand what is written without having to ask my niece what something means. The younger generations just LOVE using 'text-ese' whenever possible but I'm not fluent in it! Yes, I've figured out what LOL, LMAO, and other commonly used text-ese "words" mean but it's difficult for me to decipher such things when I come across them the first time. It took me a long time to find out what ROFL meant.

I'm from a pre-computer, pre-cell phone generation where the Dictionary was your go-to item for checking spelling. Even in this day and age of spell check, I still have a Dictionary on my desk (and I still use it ~ old habits die really hard).  

[Veddhartha]

I just remembered something worth mentioning. This is actually told to me at puzzle room. Someone American/speaking English as first language said that it's easy to pick non-English speaker from the group - for that is usually the one who's English is most literate. As a side note, person who said this to me probably didn't even remember that there might also be adult people at Gaia too...

And I have to agree. Those who have not lived in the middle of English speaking media culture do not use that terrible gibberish that much. Of course, that is generalization to average English skills. (13-year old Mexican boy rarely writes clean English to my empiric analysis ) whee