Grammar

[observer21]

Sorry i dont mean to be pedantic, but i have noticed a number of times on posts to this forum that a lot of people - from a particular English speaking nation - use the word

then as opposed to than  i.e.  'more then before'

This is even  common in editorials in Amer _ _ _  oops! newspapers.

More than please, not more then

[Jet Gorgon]

Sh*t happens, Ob. Be careful, in jest, I told a poster to mind his commas in General Forum and got a bashing for it.

[PhilHarries]

There posts instead of their posts.

It's not just a particular English speaking nation even amongst us Brits there are those who can barely construct a sentence without committing spelling or grammatical howlers, and I'm not excluding myself.

[The Vulcan]

Sorry i dont mean to be pedantic, but i have noticed a number of times on posts to this forum that a lot of people - from a particular English speaking nation - use the word

then as opposed to than i.e. 'more then before'

This is even common in editorials in Amer _ _ _ oops! newspapers.

More than please, not more then

Even more people use i and not I when referring to themselves!

[mac.wheeler]

I read a really interesting article about this a while back but I can't for the life of me remember where.

The basic premise was that due to technological advances in communication methods and the disposable nature of data these days the global population was slowly abandoning the concept of precision when interacting with others as there was a growing need to communicate more quickly, thus leading to sloppy spelling and erroneous grammar.

Young people these days are not learning to read the same way us old timers do, we read in a linear fashion, top to bottom, left to right. This is because the media available to us in our formative years followed this format closely, things like newspapers and books. Young minds today learn to read in a hypertextual fashion, jumping all over the page pulling out relevant data, often missing smaller things completely. Glossy magazines, web pages and suchlike help to program this.

I used to think this was all a bad thing, but now I figure it's just evolution, if mankind had enough years left ahead of it then eventually a global language would evolve, I'm willing to bet that language would have very little structure and be very free format.

So I guess if despite bad spelling and terrible grammar somebody is still able to get their point across, they are just pioneers of this brave new world

[koheesti]

Sorry i dont mean to be pedantic, but i have noticed a number of times on posts to this forum that a lot of people - from a particular English speaking nation -

How can you tell what nation posters here are from?

However, you're (or is it "your"??? ) right, there are plenty of grammar as well as spelling errors on this forum. But since I guess not all here are native speakers, I think they are doing a fine job communicatiing all the same.

btw - "would" is not the past tense of any word. It's a modal. http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/grammar/archive/would01.html