Do you ever punish members for their bad spelling? Is it even possible to control members way of posting and poor spelling. Is it even right to ban someone for doing that? I was asked by a member to crack down on bad spelling on my forum and I find it impossible even as the admin to do. Besides, if I did, I don't think anyone would like to come around anymore.

I understand there's a mod that allows people to use a spellchecker on InvisionFree forums. I've considered installing it, but haven't gotten around to doing so yet. Having it would likely help, since some people honestly don't want to misspell words and would find it handy.

There are some commonly-misspelled words that drive me nuts. A prime example is "teh" instead of "the." I realize that some people misspell it on purpose, and that grates on my nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. But I solved that on my forums by putting "teh" into the word filters. So now it's impossible to misspell that word, either accidentally or deliberately. If you have common spelling problems on your forum, this might be a way to handle it discreetly without having to punish anybody or nag them.

Banning is too extreme a punishment for bad spelling, in my opinion. My only exception to that would be if my forum members insisted on posting leet -- I hate that with such a passion that it's forbidden in the forum rules. If somebody slipped up once or twice, I'd just remind them of the rules. If they deliberately kept it up, I'd have to consider a suspension, but thankfully nobody has been childish enough to push it.

I don't think you can require correct spelling without giving people an avenue to correct their mistakes. So yes, installing a spell checker is a good solution. Then no one has an excuse for not using it.

Members who use FireFox2 as their browser have a spell check built in. For the others you can offer an alternative. There's an easy spell check link you can install here:
http://bigboardsresources.com/index.php?showtopic=660

I wouldn't make a hard and fast rule about it, just gentle reminders if people are blatant about bad spelling.

I use word filters a lot, just to get rid of the common, annoying stuff. Other then that, I recommend FF2 to everyone.

For a second, I thought you meant if they mis-spelled a word.

-pohr

Does anyone have a list of commonly used leet words? When I think of them I can't remember any...

I have yet to find a commonly used leet word list, however, I have found leet translators, such as this one. You may find that useful.

I imagine that bad spelling has always been somewhat banal over message boards. When it comes to spelling over the internet, I try to be a perfectionist - I have always been overzealous of light readability. I'm sure there's those elect few that cannot spell good due to their first language being something other than English, and I'm sure there's those elect few who could just care less. There has to be a reasoning for bad spelling when it comes to a point. I certainly wouldn't refer "bad" spelling as typos or misspelled words, but overly excessive misspelled words.

I wouldn't punish users for bad spelling intentionally, circumstances may apply. There's a point that has to be made in order to determine a punishable offense for bad spelling. If a user was intentionally misspelling words, using leet constantly, or speaking gibberish, than there may be a pressure point for a punishable offense. I believe a verbal warning should always apply before a punishable offense occurs. I mean, you always have to give your members a little leeway when it comes to situations like this. Being the adversary certainly wouldn't help resolve the issue of "bad" spelling.

After all, "bad" spelling can be hard to determine.

Thanks for the help. I didn't know what leet was before this but I can't say I ever liked that form of speach.

Why punish bad spelling? I run the board for of my gaming clan and we have a lot of members from Asian countries, and these people are not comfortable with English so bad grammar and spelling are understandable.

By punishing them because of this I don't think it's fair.

I try to keep my spelling and grammar correct, and by doing that I am indirectly teaching them how to do it right, and they slowly learn.

I don't mean any offense in the following, I don't mean to brag, I just want to share:
English is not my first language, and I have seen people who have english as their first language commit more grammar and spelling mistakes than I do.

So don't punish your members for committing spelling and grammar mistakes. Unless you're running a "Learn how to speak and spell in English correctly" board :d

You got that straight!

Punishing members for bad spelling is wrong and everyone has their style of typing words.

Completley out of order. I don't feel that anyone should be criticised, nor punished for their bad spelling. How do you know that the person-in-question hasn't got some kind of spelling/writing dis-order such as dyslexia? Even when people do spell incorrectly, I don't go making a big song and dance about it incase they do have dyslexia - or something similar, because it could cause offense and therefore becomes a form of social discrimination - which is against the law. It's like criticising someone (to their face) because of their accent, you just DON'T do it! :) If I cannot work out what the person is saying, I will often ignore the post completley or ask them to elaborate (which isn't saying "Can you speak proper English?", it's saying "Could you explain a little bit more about this so I can comprehend?" ) which wouldn't cause any offense.

On one of my old forums, a member used to constantly go round correcting people, and I told him thousands of times NOT to do it, so, he completley ignored my advice. In the end, I just suspended him.

I don't punish my members outright for bad spelling. But seeing as how I run an advanced RPG, people who manage to hack up the English language in a post usually get a lot of pressure from the rest of the members to invest in a spell checker and a good grammar book... that or they end up leaving the site, because no one will RP with a person who types out 400 words, 10 of which are spelt correctly. So punishments more or less aren't necessary.

But I am a strong advocate that all posts, emails, IMs, text messages, etc. should be spelt out, grammatically correct, punctuated properly, checked and rechecked. Seriously. It's not that hard - English a relatively easy language to master.

I don't like spelling mistakes either, and I hate most of the short hand that is used online. However, there is some I use like LOL or LMAO or even ROTFLMAO...but honestly that is about it. I hate talking to people in chat's that have poor grammar -- now as stated those who are not from English speaking countries will/could have problems with this. In those cases I am more forgiving. However, I would never, (most likely) ever say anything to them about it.

My board is a writing site, and I use the dictionary and thesaurus codes on my site and encourage spell checking. I tend to read and reread my posts so I pick up a lot of things that I didn't notice the first time around; not everyone is as anal as me about those things. But I find even as a writer my spelling and grammar are not the best. I've just never been good at either. As was stated, by watching others who are better at it you learn. I have learned a lot from others. I personally keep a list of words I know I misspell often right on my desk. The one I tend to try to misspell is definitely and try to put defiantly; it's pretty common mistake you'll find.

I do agree that banning for it is kind of harsh, but if it was persistent and continually being done purposely, then that is consideration for removal from the site. Like Helena said there are many resources for spell checking, just look up free online spell checker and you'll find a whole bunch. You can even find online grammar checkers. FF2 has a good spell checker built in and I find it very helpful, especially when I am working on websites and not always using something that has a spell checker.

Google Search Online Spell Checkers and Google Search Online Grammar Checkers

Just my two cents.

SIM

P.S. It was mentioned in another post that what if someone has dyslexia? I have dyslexia...but I have learned to over come it, most of the time. But I had extensive therapy when I was young to help with that; not everyone who has it is as fortunate to have parents that put in the time and expense to do therapy for years and years and pay for glasses, ect. But you are right one just never knows.