REVIEWS WITHOUT PUNCTUATION

If you found a review without the right punctuation, and here I mean the word "I" in small letters all the way through, would you downrate, even if the content was actually useful ?

If it was a new writers review I would not rate it down but inform them for the future, and to prevent downrates others may give.

Very probably, especially if the lack of punctuation makes the review difficult to read.

I dont care if its a new reviewer or not, it would need to be rated down in my opinion. Bad spelling and punctuation in a review (if often) can make a review hard to read. If its not marked down then how will that reviewer ever know that?

If it were a new members review I wouldn't rate it down or point it out unless it was in text speak or had so many errors it was difficult to read but if it was their second or third review and the member had been left advice on their previous reviews or in their guestbook then I would leave my own comment to reinforce what others had said

It depends how many reviews that person had written, also if they had done the same before and been advised by other people to take a bit more care.

If the information they gave in the review about a product was clear even though the punctuation was poor |I would still rate on the content of their review and what type of information I gained from it.

If the punctuation, spelling and grammar was so poor I found the review difficult to read then I would have to give a low rating and say why I had given it and normally get called a schoolteacher chastising people like children when I do but see these broad shoulders I was actually told tonight that a member felt I had smacked him in public when I left some advice

Depends on the extent of the errors I suppose. The odd typo and is fine as is the odd spelling mistake. However, a review that is riddled with spelling errors and with no punctuation (maybe using just capitals too) would be virtually unreadable. As such I would rate down as this is not useful to the consumer.

Okay, so what happens if you have told the member about spellcheck and they blatantly ignore it even though you have said you will teach them how to do it if they have problems and they still write reviews in the same manner ?

Well since I have already rated them down I will simply continue to do so.

Personally I don't think a consumer would take a review very seriously if the grammar and punctuation in a product review was so bad that it looked like a child had written it. I'm quite anal about punctuation and grammar - can't help it!

It would really depend on if i was able to read the review or not......I try to rate according to content if there are just a few grammatical errors, but if it is a review that is pretty bad i would probably leave a little comment to perhaps run it through a spell checker, we also have to remember that some writers do have learning disabilities, and may have difficulties with recognising mistakes.

I should have also said that I pretty much always leave a polite comment to recommend running the text through a spell checked. If it's someone I've mentioned it to before and hasn't taken any action I tend to avoid their reviews. I've seen some reviews written totally in "sms" speak which pretty much made no sense whatsoever!

I kind of fluctuate between how I feel at any given moment to a review in hand. If it does have a great usefulness value then I could potentially give it even an H rating, but in most cases the reviews themselves are already so bad that I'd downrate anyways.

If the member has already written a significant amount of reviews (that is not churned) and still has terrible grammar then there will be no mercy. So sometimes I can be more kind, and at others get so fed up that no matter how much newbism there is I'll still take a severe stance.

If it was just a simple thing then I would rate as normal. If it was bad spelling all the way through, then maybe suggest a spell check if no one else had already.

If they had already been advised and ignored this then I just wouldn't bother rating.

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here I mean the word "I" in small letters all the way through

Well of course, that's not punctuation, is it? It's incorrect capitalisation. Not the same thing.

But I say rate it down. All this guff about 'useful information' doesn't matter a fig if it's not expressed in quality English. It just makes the site look amateurish and crap, and not something I'd want to be associated with in any way.

[quote="Olly_Plimsoll"]

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amateurish and crap

Hmm, sounds like the staff to me!

Olly_Plimsoll wrote:

But I say rate it down. All this guff about 'useful information' doesn't matter a fig if it's not expressed in quality English. It just makes the site look amateurish and crap, and not something I'd want to be associated with in any way.

Agreed - and I'd go further. It is LESS useful if the review is littered with spelling and grammar errors, since it makes the review difficult to read. If it's difficult to read, it cannot impart useful information (without considerable effort on the part of the reader), since it is more trouble to extract the information.

Language rules are there to aid creativity, understanding and style, not to inhibit such things. It takes minutes to run a review through a spell checker at the very least. It takes a few more minutes to add line breaks, check grammar and capitalisation and proofread for style. It is worth doing.

I'd recommend this book:

- it not only can advise on grammar rules, but also style.

Its most useful recommendation that I recall? "Use fewer words". A lesson I've yet to learn, clearly.

As long as the review was still mostly readable I do not think I would rate it down.

And as for using i instead of I - I think it is being fairly pedantic to let it bother you!

It would be pedantic to rate people down for split infinitives or for ending sentences with prepositions. It is not too much to ask to follow a basic rule of English.

Olly_Plimsoll wrote:

It would be pedantic to rate people down for split infinitives or for ending sentences with prepositions. It is not too much to ask to follow a basic rule of English.

It would be pedantic to rate someone down for using what my kids call "a little i" rather than a capital one. However, usually there are enough mistakes to be found already in a review in which "i" is in evidence to rate down anyway.

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It would be pedantic to rate someone down for using what my kids call "a little i" rather than a capital one. However, usually there are enough mistakes to be found already in a review in which "i" is in evidence to rate down anyway

In these cases, I tend to tell the person who wrote the review in their PGB that it may affect their ratings and it would help to run it through a spellcheck. Most take that advice on board.

Well, You can call me capital-boy - but in German the capitals have a big meaning in sense, so I try to write capitals where needed, so I expect that normally, but:

1. it's a review which shall include informations on the product, opinion and experience (e.g. a DVD-review shall have some information on the DVD, maybe a link to the products-list, which on ciao.de isn't available most of the time or even doesn't exist on the site-design) ...

2. if the review isn't written without any capitals and without dots etc., I'll ignore this ... If it's too much, I'll write a sentence more in my comment or tell the user in the private guestbook ...

3. if it's without any capitals and enter-buttons etc. this will be at least a somewhat helpful or more worse ...

i sertanly wood not rate it down if sumone couldnt spell or rite properly. sum peeple cant help it, but thay shood be entitled too there opinions.

On a serious note, as I said, some people perhaps didnt do well at school and should definitely not be rated down on their ability with spelling and punctuation. Spellcheckers are not always helpful with punctuation and I dont think this is really an option. I would most certainly not rate anybody down unless I really couldnt understand what they were on about.

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Spellcheckers are not always helpful

Yew can all sew put a peace of writing threw a spell chequer and fined know miss teaks butt it wood still be know good.