Nurses who can't spell

I work with a lot of excellent nurses who can't spell worth a damn.

alex - it may not even be a matter of folks not being able to spell. instead, it may be a matter of the amount of time and care some posters put into their responses.

in this era of instant communication, IM, text messaging, iphones, blackberries, email, etc., the use of (and resulting) incomplete sentences, improper grammar, etc.) are all too common.

when I post something and afterwards notice a typo or other error, I try to correct said problem. but that's only because I'm a picky @$^%$ and like things to be right.

you asked for thoughts...

I completely agree...sometimes I wonder how people who say things like "but she dont no me so she dont suppost to juge me" and "well what i learnt my ferst semestar was basik care stuff an stuff like that".....how do they pass the tests to get INTO college let alone nursing school? I don't understand...I can understand typos, I make my fair share, but sometimes I think people completely lack basic 5th grade abilities. So sometimes I agree with OP...it is sometimes scary!

Im not saying you have to be a perfect speller or grammatically correct at all times to be a good nurse but you have to admit that some of the mistakes you see on this board make you shake your head and go....WHAAAAAT? What are they even TRYING to say?! JMO :)

Sometimes ppl dont feel like righting out all the words or putting punctuation in there sentences because they are to lazy to type properly and they just want to get there point across

Like that ;D

I really hope you were just having fun computer101!! LOL. Because it takes the same amount of time to type righting and writing...or there and their!! haha, just saying!!

Sometimes I type too fast and miss spell, but I try to correct it. We aren't perfect all the time. I hate the 'U' instead of 'you', etc.

I also know many good nurses who are bad spellers, I'm one of them

I also agree, with the era of Instant communication that plaza brought up. Although we like to see properly spelled words, as this is a professional forum, we know that people come here casually and we usually do not nit pick at misspellings. allnurses.com is also an international forum, where nurses are from all over the world, we get traffic from over 215 countries, but 85% of the traffic comes from the US. However, while English is the language we speak in these forums, it is not the first language of many of our visitors. So we just ask a little tolerance for the spelling typos.

I hope this helps give some insight on why there maybe more spelling errors than you are comfortable with.

Spelling is one thing, but the grammar people use on here is frustrating. I like how comfortable this site is, but it's also professional and I wish more people would treat it that way. I don't even use IM-language while IMing! An old english teacher of mine always recommended typing and writing properly all the time, so that when you NEED to write properly, it's not a problem.

As frustrating as it is, I do understand international users having trouble. They may still be learning the language or they may be using a translating program that doesn't catch grammar mistakes.

I don't know how all of this really affects people in real life, but it sure is sad to see on here. :-/

What about nurses who have English as a second language?

I've dealt with people that have a degree as high as MD or NP who often misspell words - they're still better at their job than a lot of American born doctors I've dealt with.

One way or another, everyone busts their butt getting a degree.