I have noticed a decline in the writing standards by many forum members over time, and it seems this decline has accelerated lately in step with our rapidly growing membership. Very basic things like capitalization and punctuation seem too much trouble for many to bother.

These matter.

This forum is a nice place to be for many reasons, but one of them is the high quality content. I don't want to see our home reduced to chat room style stream-of-conciousness text messages, and I know many members who agree with me. And far too many members drift away because this erosion in standards makes it less of a place they want to stay. Here is an important point: Most of the people driven away by this are far more important to the community than those joining who have low standards. If I must choose who to keep, it isn't a hard choice.

I also don't want to be an English teacher. I don't want my job as administrator to be correcting people's text. I want people who care enough to correct themselves. I do, re-reading and editing multiple times before I post. The 'Preview' button is my best friend and gets pressed far more than 'Submit'. And I'm far from perfect, I routinely find myself editing my old posts when a link or search brings me back to them. For all my editing I still miss things. I do, however, care about the quality of my contributions and want others to as well.

I think we are all sensitive and forgiving to those who don't speak English as a first language when it comes to some spelling or grammar issues. I'm not talking about nit picking everything to death. But these days I can't read the forum without multiple posts having significant failures from people who can do better.

Let's all try to do better. It is a courtesy to the other readers of the forum. And if you aren't posting to give something to our community, perhaps you shouldn't be posting.

I'll end by noting the most egregious error I see on a daily basis is lack of capitalizing 'I'. Any amount of casual reading of this forum should make it clear to even non-English speakers that 'I' is capitalized. i cant tell you how much im troubled by sentences like this. It just screams out that the author just can't be bothered.

Do better. If you want to post here, have respect for the community and give your readers the courtesy of quality.

Dave

P.S. If you have problems with anyone's post quality it is best to use the report button (! in the lower right of each post) or a friendly PM rather than post about it. Corrections in public aren't very friendly and I certainly try to avoid them.

I agree completely. Lazy typing in general just really bothers me and it can even cause the lazy typist to seem of lower intelligence if their typing is really bad enough. I can never take someone serious when their sentences resemble that of an 8 year old.
Another thing that really really bothers me is very very short replies. I see replies all the time that are just one to three words long. Especially on new puzzles where a response can resemble "Good" or "This is great" etc. It shows laziness and a real disinterest. I see this a lot from long time members as well as newcomers and anyone in between. People should really take the time to form useful, coherent replies.

I think a short sentence or single word is actually conveying more than you think. It's often a kind of "I am speechless, I don't know what to say, just.......wow! Some people even say "speechless". I find any reply like that highly flattering. I am not saying the whole thread should be a list of single words but I feel they are as valid as a long explanation.
I totally agree with Dave's post but lets not go further and turn the forum into an English exam where everyone is posting- "The reason I like this puzzle is because ........".
There is actually one thing I would love to see banned from the forum but I am probably in a minority of perhaps 2 and as Spock said "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few".

Aye aghree. thees is grate !

On a more serious note, I think this is very nice and can't wait to see results =)

I belong to those who frequently write very short answers. Therefore I want to use the chance to explain my behaviour:
When I write a three-word-answer in "New puzzles" I do it because I expect it from others as well. I post frequently new puzzles made by myself and many of them only get three or even less answers. As the inventor/builder I prefer an answer of three words over giving no answer all. I try to act consistent and give other inventors some feedback even when I have nothing useful to say or to ask.

I can't say anything about Dave's original point because english is a foreign language for me.

I guess it's just a personal peeve. I've always been of the mindset that if you don't have anything useful to say, nothing should be said at all. And I never suggested to write anything like a formal essay. That would be dumb. A lack of words can suggest speechlessness but "great" does not. Guess I'm just used to old forum habits.

I understand how a lot of people here don’t have English as their first language, therefore a few spelling/grammar mistakes are to be expected. But, when people don’t even appear to try (i.e. no capitalization, no punctuation, every word spelled wrong) it can become an annoying post, even if there is a good point.

I'm pretty sure a post to this effect has been on a lot of people's minds lately. When I started as a member here, I was 12 or 13. Unlike other forums I'd been a member of, page long posts were common occurrences. People put a lot of thought into the things they wrote and it definitely left an impression on me. I still see that a lot here, especially from the older members, but there's a bit more short, poor quality material.

I agree with Tony that short replies definitely have their place, but when there's a serious discussion (as there usually is on this forum) good grammar is essential. (As for foreign members, I've noticed that while their posts may lack perfect grammar, they are very well thought out and informative.) If I joined today as a 12 year old member, I think I would probably be more slack with my spelling and post quality, simply because there's more of it.

Also, Firefox has a spellchecker built into it, and I suspect other web browsers do, too. It's not *that* hard to have good grammar when there's big orange squiggly lines under everything that's spelled wrong.