I agree. The definition may allow for it, but it doesn't "feel" right using it to describe misspelled words.

OT: One of my favorite malaprops was when my nephew, who had been playing offensive tackle in pee wee football, got all excited because they were going to start running some plays where he'd be a "legible receiver".

Back on topic: Yes, I'm putting the period outside the quotes because I like it better there.

Just read a sentence on another board that started with "Another words."

It confused me for a second until I sounded it out.

Lock it in. Final answer.

I wouldn't use legible for that either, particularly as "intelligible" is available.

Rando anecdote:

Sophomore year in high school, I got bumped up to English Honors from standard English. My new teacher was a huge grammar/spelling nit. We had about 1-2 essays per month (short ones, 2-4 pages long) and she had this rule: if she was reading your essay, and came across a spelling or grammatical error, she circled it, wrote an F on your paper, and returned it. You had one week to correct your paper and turn it back in, but your maximum grade was now one grade less (so after you turned it back in, you could only get a B). If she found another error, same process, and next time you turned it in you could only get a C.

The interesting thing was, she didn't read the rest of the essay. She circled the error and returned it, so if you started your essay "When I red Hamlet..." she would circle that, and you'd have no idea if you had more spelling / grammatical errors. So now you'd be kinda ****ed. One of the best teachers I ever had though, even if she did screw me up into a grammar nit for the rest of my life.

Btw, she just did it with spelling / grammar - no sentence structure, flow, or anything like that from Shrunk and White.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...ndoms-1073812/

Subject line, facepalm.

Standard killa.

That guy uses apostrophes like they're going out of style.

I can at least understand the the reasoning for using the apostrophe there, even though it's incorrect, because of the non-standard use of "random" as a noun (like it's sort of an abbreviation for "random persons").

When people decide out of nowhere that a noun just needs it for some reason is when it really bugs me. The classic example I use is a sign at my old work about making sure to put your "hats, coats, and umbrella's" away in the closet and not leave them laying around. Like someone was writing that, looked at "umbrellas", and said "Whoa, that's a long one! Better break it up with some punctuation".

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Eh, I may be a bit of a dick about it sometimes. Used to get into big fights with my ex-girlfriend about it.

It wasn't my fault though!! She had pretty good grammar, and very good spelling, but she said two things I cannot stand:

"I will give him the benefit of A doubt" (Give him the benefit of what doubt? Just any generic doubt? This makes no sense.)

She said "acrossed" instead of "across". Ok. What the **** is that.

So yea, it wasn't going to work out anyway....

^ Haven't really been following the thread so this has probably been said before, but the flip side of you being a nit and being annoyed by seemingly simple, careless errors are women who are grammatically sound. It's like my rare forays onto online dating sites: most of the profiles are fairly sloppily written, which is pretty dumb when you consider that it functions as an introduction and communicating clearly and properly is almost a universal positive.

Yet occasionally there are well-written profiles which tend to communicate that the person is smart, or at least meticulous, and at the very least probably not really stupid (at least from a scholastic perspective; it's possible they suck at life). These profiles are like little gems that radiate hotness. Of course, the women who write such profiles are invariably fat, so I don't spoil the illusion by investigating further.

Lol interesting that you bring that up...

Not sure if it's been said in this thread (probably has) but online dating sites can be horrendous when it comes to that. I actually met my current GF on an online dating site. I would be lying if I said I wasn't immediately turned off by girls with poor grammar. It's really sad sometimes. My gf has fantastic grammar though. Journalism majors FTW!!!

The funny thing is the more I write, the less I care about grammar (esp. others'). Two reasons:

1) I've realized the optimal writing approach, for me, involves writing 1st drafts featuring whatever I feel like doing: shorthand, self-indulgent turgidity, internet-speak, whatever. I can churn out like a few k words and revise it later instead of fretting over every sentence -- and the former requires a much smaller % of the effort, is many orders more fun, and allows me to focus on refining concepts and large-scale structure or whatever. The real writing is in rewriting, anyway.

2) My skype/aim-chat can be unintelligible at times esp. when I'm just ****ing around. I reconcile that with simply not giving a **** given the informal nature of IM, and obv there's nothing wrong with not giving a **** there. So it's not exactly a big leap to assume that many don't give much of a **** about forum posts, and thus will let out the occasional solecism or typo or whatever without any post hoc getting-panties-into-a-bunch.

So given both forum posts' 1st-draft-esque nature (related to point #1) and their informality (point #2) and my understanding of both of those dynamics, I can't bring myself to care much.

If you write a decent amount, being an anti-snob has merits (in the 1st-drafting process, not the re-writing process!); your own snobbishness will turn itself inward and paralyze you. So I often find myself doing the linguistic equivalent of calling grammar's mom a whore.

One I've been seeing and hearing lately is people saying "none believer" instead of "non-believer". Is that acceptable anywhere?

No more so than "dilemna".

Not acceptable anywhere, ever. It's just ignorance.

Wow seriously? Mother of god.

I can barely deal with dillema....

Better than paradiggem.

Believe it or not: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...omenon-367533/

"dilemna" was clearly a common alternate spelling at one point:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22di...820&lr=lang_en

One of my favorite archaic usages:

http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=ejaculated&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_mi nec%2027_2%20999,cd_maxec%2031_2%201900&num=10

Anyone born in the mid-1800s should be allowed to use the alternate spelling. The rest of us, no.

Tuq what girl is that?

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/gallery...-118744575%3A1

I never get tired of that line.