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?

  • Sunsofold@lemmings.world
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    6 days ago

    Don’t forget the internet is global. People for whom English is a second language are much more common than they once were.

  • jaxxed@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    I blame these f’ing phone keyboards and autocorrect. I can’t see what I am touching, I can’t feel it, there’s no feedback, and I have to look up while I type. Whoever came up with approach deserves… A bad case of indigestion.

  • collapse_already@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    I would not be surprised if autocorrect was a major culprit along with phone keyboards. You can type something correctly and have autocorrect make it wrong. It’s also super easy to get the wrong letter if you have normal sized hands and are typing on a phone keyboard. I have turned autocorrect completely off and am significantly less error prone as a result.

    I frequently decide against correcting an error if I think my intention is clear, and I am in a hurry. I don’t really care what strangers on the internet think of my editing skills.

    • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I hate this. For instance, using u instead of you, autocorrect often turns it to I. It also will fucking “correct” your to you’re when you typed your on purpose. I’m ready to just turn it off. It fucks up my posts, texts, emails all the time. I don’t have this issue on my laptop.

      • collapse_already@lemmy.ml
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        6 days ago

        I think you mean it will ducking correct…

        I turned mine off completely because it has bo comprehension of when an apostrophe is appropriate in front of the letter s. Forever making words possessive that were intended to be plural. Apostrophes do not mean “look out, here comes an s.”

        • SpraynardKruger@lemm.ee
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          6 days ago

          Thi’s i’s new’s to me. Can you give example’s of when its appropriate to use apostrophe’s?

  • Jarix@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    My older friend and i were talking about this a about 6 months ago. We both are convinced auto correct functions are getting worse. I suspect AI injection into the function somehow, but tin foil hat me also thinks it’s strategy to force more people to use microphone. Seems way more valuable to data miners

    • SgtAStrawberry@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      For me auto correct has a BIG problem when I miss a dubbel consonant. It will start suggesting words that doesn’t have a single letter in common with what I’m trying to spell, it will suggest completely wrong words and it will even suggest nonsensical words that doesn’t exist. Everything except the exact word I have spelt, but with two s instead of one.

      Like yesterday I was trying to spell I believe it was “Necessary” but I had spelt “nesesary” and it was like did you mean “Acceptances” “approval” “appel” “sope” “opposition” “operation” “passport” like that isn’t even close to what I’m am trying to type.

      So I can completely believe auto correct have gotten worse and AI dose seem like a likely suspect.

      Especially the times when I completely don’t know what I am trying to spell but it gets that “Trioqulationitasitq” is supposed to be “tribulation”

      I don’t know how in the world it can do that but think nesesary is supposed to be approval.

  • BlackSheep@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    Completely agree. I cringe on a regular basis. I never know if it’s “stylistic”, typos, laziness? Sentence structure has also gone for shit.

  • gnu@lemmy.zip
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    6 days 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
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      6 days 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
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        5 days 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
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          3 days 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.

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    7 days ago

    My spelling and grammar are a lot worse when I type on my phone. I also accidentally a word.

    I don’t bother with correcting it since I don’t care.

  • wildwhitehorses@aussie.zone
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    6 days ago

    I’m burnt out man. I just dont have the energy or the careth to be accurate or even care about a small thing.

  • thatradomguy@lemmy.world
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    7 days 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
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        6 days 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

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    It’s been awful for a while.

    All the too/to/two or their/they’re/there kind of wreckage along with stuff like “for all intensive purposes”, “flee market”, or “diffuse the situation”.

    There’s tons of writing like that everywhere. Wouldn’t be so bad if people learned when corrected, but I think most can’t be bothered.

    My take is that people don’t read anymore along with probably an unhealthy dose of laziness and “gotta write all messed up to act cool” to boot.

    Reading well-written books of any sort will help the mind fix how words go together and how they’re spelled. But today everyone reads everyone else’s shitty grammar, spelling, and whatever massacre of stylistic choices were made to stand out and look cool in the comment section of the youtube videos or tiktoks they just watched. That’s probably the extent of the reading they do.

  • Tieas@lemmy.ml
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    5 days ago

    I feel like auto correct and voice to text aren’t as good as they used to be. AI, laziness, I’m more of an idiot not sure who to blame.

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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    7 days 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
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      7 days 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
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      6 days 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.

    • sga@lemmings.world
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      6 days 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)