I agree, if there's one thing that pisses me off it's when some people act like the most unholy of sins was committed when you simply forgot a letter or punctuation mark. If I can read it, I don't complain.

Like I said, the way I see it there are two offenders where it comes to internet grammar. One is the knit-pickers that cop an attitude about every little spelling and grammar mistake even when the post in question is otherwise understandable. The other is the people that mash out a stream of consciousness on their keyboard, don't even read their own post to make sure it makes any sense, and expect others to put forth the effort to puzzle out the meaning of their gibberish. Both are annoying, IMO.

I will add, however, that I do tend to pay more attention to posts that are well-articulated. People on forums can't see you, hear you speak, or read your mind. The way your post reads is the way they'll imagine you speak, and that can have a subconscious effect on what people think of you and how they view the content of your post.

Word.

Some of this thread seems a little... Unrealistic. Bashing the few people who are grammar/spelling Nazis or the few who use text speech on this forum doesn't really add much besides post count. However, sharing your views on the matter is actually interesting to read. I suppose this statement will be overlooked regardless, but it was worth a shot.

It is not really a problem for me. I can't spell or type for the life of me and yet I still post here. I think as long as a post is understandable then you are okay... unless you post with l33t speak or something then that is just bad. As to people who are grammar nazis well I think they can be one of two things either right or wasting their time.

Y'all need to read up on some of these here linguistics......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics

I can't believe it took me this long to realize the thread title is misspelled.

Free flowing is implying posts have good grammar.

look at how i type then re-read my post.

i am all for proper grammar, grammar saves lives(the difference between "Let's eat, Grandma" and "Let's eat Grandma" ). but this is a fun forum as i understand, no? so i think it should be OK to relax some. i use this forum, facebook and some other places to unwind from grammar police, school grammar demands, and just regular stress that comes with grammar demands. if people can understand you, then you are cool. should be cool. that's how i see. it does not hurt anyone. if i don't use upper case letters, it just takes extra effort for the reader to deduce that the sentence starts here or there and it saves me from having to reach for that shift button(this takes some toll off the fingers for me, good for my health, and it leaves the reader with a mental exercise, a good mental work out. but then again, it does force people into mental work that they may not want to deal with at that time... maybe i do need to re-think this... sigh, here i am trying to make a case for why it should be fine to not be as grammatically perfect as elsewhere, but it turns out i just came up with reasons why grammar should be followed(to avoid hurting people). eh, nuts.i guess i should at least make the first letter of the sentence upper case. I am not not giving up on using lower case i if it is mid sentence though.