I have come across many posts lately containing abbreviations such as sth, sb/sbd, pls, ur, etc. At first I had no idea what these abbreviations meant (except for pls). I even posted a comment on the question asking about the same. But it was over a day, and no one had responded. Today I discovered another such post containing such abbreviations. A reputed user even pointed out that these are not correct English and should be avoided. I know he/she is a beginner, but should we take it on ourselves to correct them instantly? I even searched using these keywords, and got many results (most of them) which were left unedited.
On top of that, there are people who take their precious time in writing and linking their abbreviations in their posts, but can't write it in the context. I mean how very painful!
Hence my question, should we take a step and edit such posts, because like me there are many users out there who are not familiar with the messaging language that people use nowadays? I mean we are an English platform after all, we should encourage proper English habits and usage, rather than discouraging it.
This may appear verbose. Read only if you want to know what I think of the suggested posts/links.
Edited Part: Clarification of "why my question is different from the one's mentioned in the comments?"., although no one deemed of my question being a duplicate. I just want to clarify the observations. Thank you all for your references and suggestions.
When should I correct an ELL's grammar? I have read this post even before I asked my question here. It certainly highlights the point that we should not edit every possible grammar mistake in the original poster's question, because fellow users may misinterpret their fluency level. I totally agree. I, for one, never edit everything in the sentence or example they are including, but definitely edit the rest of the question part which should be unambiguous to every reader who reads it in future.
Is it really pointless to edit questions to use correct English on ELL? This post gave me an idea that we should edit not only for formatting but for actual grammar corrections also, if there are any. While I think both of them are essential, our focus should be primarily on more correct Grammar.
What's our editing policy? This post in specific has proved very helpful for me. I got to know that if a post is an answer, no extra lines should be added or edited (other than grammatical or spelling errors) unless mentioned by the author in the comment section; or very best ask the author himself/herself to add those lines in their answer. I myself have never edited an answer till now. And henceforth I will keep this in mind.
When should a question be edited in these situations? Similar observations to that of the 1. But I would defy the saying that we should not edit solely for formatting purposes, because sometimes the questions are just too ugly to read and speedily becomes incomprehensible.
Informality, modern messaging, and editing This question is quite difficult to understand in the first go (especially for a non-native speaker like me). This post is, I would say, similar to mine. But it covers more than one concept in a single question. Mine is king of self-centered (or so I feel). The edit comments though are similar to what every other person suggested.
How much editing is too much editing? I want to highlight a point from one of the answers to this question.
It's generally considered poor etiquette to play the staunch editor who "fixes" every post with nothing but minor pedantic changes. But if you can improve the post substantively, you should; it can only help the site.
So according to him, we shouldn't edit minor changes! But then again, I do not understand, why are we hesitating to edit when SE itself defines the ground level rules for editing posts. Take a look at the following picture to know what I am talking about:
I mean it is clearly stated here what should be done while someone is editing. Then why so much confusion and hesitation?
Moving on to the last suggested post/link, We need to be more careful with suggested edits from low-rep users. I will include two lines which particularly caught my attention.
"Substantial" is not really a good litmus, because more often than not it could be subjective. A contribution in the right direction is a contribution, regardless of its character count.
As pointed out here by Eddie Kal, we shouldn't discourage newcomers by simply rejecting their (correct) suggested edits, albeit they being minor. Because again, we are an English community. I know some people may disagree and disregard this post, but it should be our top-most priority to help people out with their English knowledge with whatever we can and keep this site as clean as possible.
Hence my question still stands, because looking at all the answers above by different people on different questions, I am still pretty confused, although I think we should edit them. The reason being, if the questioner is actually using the word like sth or sbd or any other abbreviations, then they must surely know what the abbreviations stand for! Then it does not actually affect a responder/answerer to think that the fluency of the questioner is high, at the same time maintaining a clean etiquette.
