Wushu  +  26736 Wed, 31 Mar 04 01:22 AM I'm going to do a few experiments. How well can the average poster on the internet write. I found a post of average length from a frequent vistor of another board (his identity and the URL of the site will be kept anonymous). How many mistakes are in this? Mike, have you tried a FW CF Card reader? I have one and it's very fast. iPhoto is the bottleneck here (it creates the thumbnails as it imports). If I simply copy the photos off the card to the hard disk, it's very fast. My camera (Nikon CP 4500) only has USB 1 so it's a great improvement over that. I can spot a few but people here are good at being specific. Wushu Joined on Sat, Aug 30 2003 North America New Member 30 "Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice I say the darker the flesh then the deeper the roots" - Tupac Shakur "Keep Ya Head Up"

	rommie  +  26766 Wed, 31 Mar 04 10:42 AM That looks like perfectly good English to me. Purists might argue that the "sentences must start with an uppercase letter" rule has been violated, but if "iPhoto" is a case-sensitive name then fair enough. I don't know enough to comment on whether or not "FW CF Card" is or is not a proper noun (so I don't know whether it should be "Card" or "card"). The only possible "errors" I can see here involve capitalization, and even if they are real errors, they might just be typos. I guess I just don't see language as a "right" or "wrong" thing to that extent. If you can communicate successfully to your target audience, you are correct in the sense of being in context, and that's all that really matters (IMO). Rommie rommie Joined on Mon, Jan 26 2004 Earth orbit Regular Member 606 Nouns

	suzi  +  26823 Wed, 31 Mar 04 06:37 PM but what is the purpose of ur study? - ppl on boards type fast, and the communication is more akin to speech than writing at times, so you wil find lots of " errors" - but so what? I dont fuss with stuff in e-comms, but i would in an official letter that needed the attention to detail and very rarely proof read and my typing is poor - but i assure you i am perfectly caplbe of spelling when it matters! I guess it makes sense if you are thinking of it as way of bringing forward issues to discuss, like "how would you change this to be fitted for a fromal context?" but it is pretty pointless if you just want to be sneering at the "mistakes" of the average board user!! suzi Joined on Wed, Jan 7 2004 Full Member 465 Spelling, Official Letter

	mirapence  +  26945 Fri, 02 Apr 04 10:03 AM Hello Wushu, This is not an easy task, and these may not be what you have in mind. Allow me to tackle the problem anyway. 1. “an FW” instead of “a FW” 2. a comma after “I have one”. 3. no parentheses, instead, a semicolon after “here” 4. no parentheses but commas like “,Nikon CP 4500,” 5. a comma before “so it’s a great…..” Then the whole sentences read as follow. Mike, have you tried an FW CF card reader? I have one, and it's very fast. iPhoto is the bottleneck here; it creates the thumbnails as it imports. If I simply copy the photos off the card to the hard disk, it's very fast. My camera, Nikon CP 4500, only has USB 1, so it's a great improvement over that. Could be a poor job. I gave it a try… at least. Thanks. Mirapence mirapence Joined on Mon, Mar 8 2004 California, U.S.A Junior Member 77 Colons, Commas, Semicolons