Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Birds of a feather

I was showing a friend of mine the profile that Guinness Girl created for me...


Friend: "Bad spellers need not apply?" Better just make that "Those with bad grammar."

Me: Hey! I'm not that big a snob. I can try to allow some leeway...

Friend: No. Trust me. I've known C students. You wouldn't like them.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If I have to choose, I'd say having bad grammar is worse than being a bad speller. For the most part, I hear people speak more often than I see what they write/type. So, if they are prone to spelling receive without obeying the "i before e except after c" rule, I am less likely to be affected by that than if they say things like "She don't know what she's talking about".

lizgwiz said...

I have a major problem with both bad spelling and bad grammar. Somehow bad spelling seems worse, though, in this, the age of spell check, because it implies a certain laziness. Grammar correction does take a little effort, but spelling? What, you don't have two minutes to spiff yourself up? Would you wear dirty clothes on a date? I guess that's my fear. I'll go out with a guy with poor linguistic skills and he'll have poor hygiene, as well.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I'd kick someone out of the running for both bad grammar and bad spelling, too. The occasional mistake is fine, but when someone can't put together a proper sentence? That's like nails on chalkboard!

Anonymous said...

I can almost excuse a poorly worded email, or a spelling error or two, but back when I was doing the online dating thing the biggest turnoff that I saw far too often was grammar and spelling errors in people's profiles.

That's almost as bad as errors on a resume.

Jasclo said...

wouldn't want a C student leaving you love notes!

Stefanie said...

3Cs--I'm with you on that, though thankfully I'll say I haven't run into a lot of date prospects with atrocious spoken grammar. It's the print stuff we were talking about, and I am trying to be at least marginally more forgiving about that (in casual contexts, anyway).

Liz--I agree. Spell check should be a given. As should proper hygiene. Both fine points.

Nabb--Amen, though... see above. I'm trying to be better about my expectations with this. Those who expect nothing, after all, are seldom disappointed (or so it says on the sad puppy plaque that my mother had hanging in our bathroom when I was a child).

DJ (I'm just going to go ahead and shorten that anyway, Full House imagery be damned)--I've said the exact same thing before: that a profile is essentially a resume (a resume the guy is submitting for the very important job of my boyfriend), and as such, proofing and spell checking is a must.

Jasclo--Ugh. Good point.

Anonymous said...

Ha! So true, so true.