FarmI wrote:
"Trish Brown" wrote in message

Sorry... I'm a retired school teacher and spelling is a hotspot for me.
Gives me the nervous hives when I see an error. They don't let you type in
red ink on the Internet, sadly. ;-D

I'm not a retired teacher but I too get the collywobbles at some of the more
blatant abuses we see. "To" for "too" drives me crackers and sometimes one
even sees "two" for one of the others. The American habit of writing/saying
"tell someone who could care less" simply astounds me.


What about 'I'm going out. Do you want to come with?'

Additionally, what about 'prolly' for 'probably' and 'congradulations'
for 'congratulations' and 'walla' for 'voilà'?

My absolute favourite (NOT) is when people add an apostrophe *every*
time a plural is required. Hence, we get piano's, dog's, mice' and
womens's!!! Oh, and 1990's instead of 1990s.

I can feel my soapbox rising up beneath me...

This is why spelling, grammar and punctuation matter. If done correctly,
there can be no ambiguity or misunderstanding of what one is trying to
say. Look at the poster from earlier in the week (forget his name - the
bloke who was using a lot of phone-text forms - you know the one?) His
writing was barely understandable. Of course, *he* knew perfectly well
what he was trying to say, but few others did: we could only give
educated guesses at his exact meaning.

I think it's *grand* that grammar and punctuation are slowly being
reintroduced in schools! Both my parents left school at age fifteen, yet
both were excellent spellers and writers. Today's kids are every bit as
smart as that older generation and they *can* learn to spell well.

I think it's interesting to note that Latin names for plants are easily
understood by most of us and leave no doubt as to a plant's identity
when various common names might be in use...

--
Trish {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia