Safe Speed Forums

Agreed. Posts that look like they have just been hammered out with little thought - filled as they are with typos, mixed up capitals etc - often have been. Almost inevitably they contribute very little to the debate, its a pattern I've certainly noticed over the time I've been here.

Hear here! I recently 'sacked' my solicitor for using administrative staff who consistenly sent out paperwork with fundamental spelling, grammatical and dating errors (31st September, for example!!)

It gave the impression of shoddy and inconsiderate work - not something I wanted to be put out by my representatives.

If I had been on the receiving end of such letters I know what I would be thinking of said solicitor and his clients - along the lines of 'what kind of idiots are we dealing with here....?'

I wasn't aware their was ever a subject under debate here as the thread starter seldom bothers to reply to the umpteen threads he/she has already started and on the rare occasions he/she does, he/she fails to respond to any of the posts other users have made. The threads all have the same antagonistic, factually incorrect flavour to them and in most peoples opinion this approach is consistent with trolling.

Given the subject of the post and the nature of the post I think other forum users actions have been entirely appropriate. After all, there was never anything sensible to discuss in the first place. Perhaps others have a different opinion.

Should this thread be moved to general chat?

I was thinking more the recycle bin...

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Speed camera policy Kills

Yep. Here it goes...

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

[/quote]
Without wishing to mark myself down as a bit of a twat (although it becomes ever more apparent that I am)...I think you'll find that should be "you're the investigator"
Alright, alright, I'm sorry![/quote]

I stand corrected B-
Don't you spell twat with a capitol T?

This is getting out of hand.

I've never seen the value of criticising someones spelling, and what purpose that actually serves, provided it's not abusive and in not in "text speak". From the few posts I've seen The Sensible Majority has done neither of them, and I've understood the point being made, even if I've not agreed with it.

Whilst this is a very useful discussion board with very articulate members, I think we should be careful not to get to hung up over things like spelling punctuation and grammer since that could well put people off joining, whilst adding little to the sum of road safety knowledge.

You are missing the point!

What is a capitol T?

I was being ironic.

Oh, in that case, so was I.

Are you sure you have spelt that correctly

I don't think it's pedantry.

50% of the posts on this thread contain one or minor errors (ironic or otherwise ) and the eye can overlook these.

My feeling is that when a post is littered with errors to the point of not being readable however, it unavoidably detracts from the point being made, and consequently casts the poster in a worse light.

As pointed out earlier on this thread, there are two issues merged together.

Firstly, if a post is so badly composed that it is incomprehensible then the value of it is lost. There has to be a minimum level of literacy and clarity.

The second point is illustrated by my attitude to communications sent out on behalf of my company. I am fanatical about accuracy and readability as any slackness reflects badly on the business revealing it as slapdash and uncaring.

I am not sure that the latter attitude is appropriate on a discussion forum where we can all form our own private judgements on others with little harm done. The main SafeSpeed web pages, however, must be properly written to show we are a professional organisation.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Malcolm's post above sums it up nicely. OPNs (obligatory pedantic nitpickings) are essential in proofreading works to be published, but have no place in forums provided the standard of a post is sufficiently high that the point being made reaches the large majority (sensible or not ) of users.

You should post in US forums, to understand what bad English and uneducated thinking is really about.
Some of them dont seem to have even a basic education, OR common sense.

As long as you can read and understand what is written here, I'm not bothered, but like rc11o I do expect a higher standard from people in certain jobs and positions!!

If you take Steve Callaghans (CSCP manager) posts for instance, his spelling was a good indication of how rattled he was!

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check out... http://english2american.com/

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Speed camera policy Kills

I can understand everyone's points about being overly pedantic, but I think I am more inclined to seek higher standards generally.

I too will happily overlook the odd spelling mistake, or the occassional use of the wrong spelling of a word (eg their ~ there ~ they're).

Like some others have commented, written communications is important for one's credibility. Whilst the odd error can be overlooked (I'm sure I've made a few grammatical cock-ups myself even on this post), a very messy post, riddled with errors is both ambiguous and a discredit to the author.

I too would be inclined to assume that TSM was "slapdash", "gash" and generally exercised poor attention to detail in all aspects of everyday life.


The problem with such a forum is that one's writing abilities are one's ONLY impression. Wildcat, your command of English is better than my German so you are naturally excused. Even with your Swiss-isms mixed in we understand your point however, as your sentence structure is good.

Not so the case with TSM, where everything is a bit of a mess.

Having said that, I do eventually understand what TSM is trying to say, so I take peoples' point that the nit-picking should be left out.

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Because I like to only have to read something once in order to understand something a poster has to say. It does become quite hard sometimes to understand what you're trying to say when you don't use capitals, full stops or commas. So, to summarise, IMO, it is important to use grammar correctly, so that your point can be made clearly.

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