Give 'em a touch of the knout!

If they're too lazy to learn the *language*, why should we bother exposing them to higher education? It isn't the place of a university to be teaching basic language skills.

Mind you, I'm soft on spelling and grammar mistakes. I'd support the 'one percent off the total score for every mistake on the paper' approach, rather than the hard-line 'you've failed!' at the first mistake.

(Yes, I *know*. There will always be unfortunates who are unable on medical grounds to write English without mangling it. But no-one else has an excuse.)

So a sentence such as "Their books - they're there" would now become "There books - there there."

Cripes.

All kidding aside there is no central body that governs English like, say, French Academy does French. As such there is nothing stopping anyone from deciding that these other spellings are in fact correct.

Paris - for her significant contributions to the English lexicon.

to give in,

give up,

go out,

drink,

then your language skills will be at the level of the average student at buckinghamshire unviersity {THATS A UNI NOW WTF ?!?!?!?!}

...but I won't be employing the stupid illiterate twerps.

Here's a thought, why bother with actual letters when talking is pretty good, scrap this writing bollocks, it causes nothing but trouble. I want to see ideas represented in picture format like the Maya, possibly aided by interpretive dance cycles to convey the emotions behind the words and the cultural identity of the people speaking them...

I noticed recently that our local Teenage Pregnancy service did a run of leaflets with "R U 13 2 19" on them, surely kids don't see that and go "Ah, now theres a hip young message I can relate to, must go to the local community centre to pick up a bundle of free profilactics so that I might be protected if I strike it lucky with that pretty thing in the summer dress". I'm no young buck but at 23 I'm pretty au fait with text lingo and this just makes me cringe, like the 42 year old dads who blast fall out boy out of the car speakers and think they're cool, or the scumbags who put fancy or foreign phrases like 'au fait' in their posts to make themselves sound important, dickheads.

Oh, wait...

And I'm tired of learning foreign languages, so let's get rid of them and make everyone speak loudly and slowly ;)

Isn't there something very wrong here? If a teacher is tired of correcting the spelling mistakes made by his (or her) pupils, isn't that indicative of the standard of education they've had?

Surely the students should be getting tought how to spell, not having their common mistakes accepted as 'variants'. Or is this to allow exam marking to be outsourced more easily next time round?

Just knock marks off for it. If they haven't got the nous to find out what's wrong with their spelling then what the hell are they doing at university in the first place?

> Anyone correcting our deliberate (as in the headline) misspelling, or indeed our

> accidental misspelling, will be cast onto the barbecue

I think you're in danger of loosing the plot :-)

No, please, use a dictionary...

Sorry Prof., but your setting a very bad precedent or to put it another way "If you give 'em and inch, they'll take a mile!".

Just please please please don't start up the nonsense about phonetic spelling.

I can't wait for for the kidz from London <i>axing</i> me a question, or the kidz from Newcastle who get wet it the <i>rian</i>, or us in the home counties who would rather take a <i>barth</i> than a shower.

"Al vere wel, Duckter* Smiv, but whier does that leaf "they're", eh? Wheir?"

What rubbish! We read by recognising word shapes (not their spelling) and hence their meaning. You can generally swap all the middle letters of words and still have readable sentences - but that shouldn't make it acceptable. He's just after an easy life, the lazy old duffer*.

Ask a lawyer about how important spelling can be (along with proper punctuation).

* He's probably a quack.

* Must be an old duffer to pander to the yoof of today.

PS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_First_Law_of_Usenet

stew pit kunt. neckst heel b teling us too yous txtspk insted.

and scream HERETIC!!!!

Do a google on "20 Gnarliest Torture Devices of All Time" and suggest he review his options.

Efros

Changing the spelling and you can change the whole meaning of the word. My pet hate is how the word 'lose' is constantly being written as 'loose' all over forums, comments pages etc. it isn't rocket science.

Alowing such aweful speling shud b consderd criminel. Spelin relly aint that hard, especialy with spel chequers.

i also think u should get 2-10 years in the electric chair for using "ur" and "u" and ur decimals (2) instead of "to".

Damn teenagers got 2 learn 2 write properly if they're using ur internet. :)

Ballmer, 'cause we all know he writes like the above in his less public internal memos.

I shall get my coat, mine's the one with the dictionary in the pocket.

This reminds me of the old joke email (http://cloudybay.netfirms.com/humour/newspeak.shtml).

Worryingly, entering "Ze drems of the Guvernmnt vud finali hav kum tru" into google, it asked Did you mean: Ze drems of the Government vud finali hav kum tru?

It's clearly spreading...

I was delighted to learn (admittedly on wikipedia, so pinch of salt mode is ON) that "Buckinghamshire New University owes its existence, at least in part, to a tax imposed on beer and spirits towards the end of the nineteenth century". This explains a lot.

...what else can't they be bothered to do correctly?

One hopes that no technical courses (e.g. engineering or anything actually important) are taught at this uni if their (there?) mathematics is as inaccurate as their spelling.

Idiots.

If the students cannot spell - fail them. It's that simple.

...and fail those that chose to follow in his illiterate wake.

Learn to spell kids. I don't want to support your unemployed ass because your resume is full of typos and 'made up' words.

u jst no its thees kids hull b cryng wn thy cant gt a job newere

print there certificates in thier own spelling? Not that anybody's ever looked at mine, mind. Or my certificate ; )

I might add, that being the old duffer that I am, at 27 I find youth spellings to be rather difficult at times. As for the slang, that just gets silly.

I think Paris gets rather a bad press around here. Not from me. I still would. So long as she was quiet.

Are the misspellings to be condemned & the unsavory cliches of the article accepted?

Please, no. They just make matters worst by letting idiots sink hat because it passes whatever piss of junk MS have put on their PC, awl is OK.

The very flames of hell cannot burn hot enough for this man.

I can't believe there's someone I actually despise more than Hazel Blears.

..they expected to be able to correctly spell "Criminology" on thier CVs? Or is it just meant to be a padding degree where they never get jobs? If i was reading a CV and they had left typos in - bin.

If you're about to say "But they would pay more attention when writing a CV" then THEY SHOULD PAY ATTENTION WHEN DOING THEIR/THERE/THEY'RE/THAR/THUR DEGREE!

I loved the way my maths lecturer corrected my borked roman numeral page headings (It was an accidnet, on the second set I had only one sheet of paper, accidentally wrote 1 and didn't want to cross it out for neatnesses sake.. so I went with II, it went squiffy at 7 I think. VII or IIIX?)

More pedants, less "I can't be bothered to mark things" professors.

Oh and less people that say "think" instead of "thing", Somethink? TELL ME THEN, WHAT *DO* SOME THINK?

*Pants, breathes, trousers*

Aliens would learn English proper.

EuroEnglish

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish": --

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil sevants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"'s in the language is disgraceful, and they should go away.

By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaning "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!

It's all well and good helping them get educated good and proper, but shouldn't someone tell these illiterate darlings how it's going to look when they send out their first CV and have it rejected by everyone?

What the hell is the point in encouraging bad habits? Sounds like an excuse for lazy teaching to me.

Jolyon

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spikingwerld.

kan fuk off, coz e can.

Seriously, I haven't heard such a lot of wet fermented dribble in a long time. No, we don't have the equivalent of an Academie française to "protect" our language, and English is indeed evolving all the time, which is a wonderful thing. However we do have accepted grammatical and orthographic standards that help us to communicate with each other without too many problems. Just because some people cannot meet these standards, it doesn't mean that we should lower them. How will these people then thrive in a world where there are many people for whom the standards are still important?

In saying that, I know people who just cannot spell many words correctly, no matter how hard they try. It creates a sort of mental block for them. One of my girlfriends in particular had me tearing out my hair in my attempts to show her how to spell words and how to remember they way they were spelt. In the end I gave up, become relaxed about it, and concentrated on enjoying the other pleasures that we could share together. I know that there will always be people like that, but it doesn't mean that we should lower the standards for everybody in general.