"Trish Brown" wrote in message
FarmI wrote:

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?'

haven't come across that one, but I doknow what my reaction to that would be
:-))

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

And 'ass' for 'arse' - I tend to ask why they are into donkey abuse.

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.

Supermarkets seem to be good at that violation.

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.

Our daughter has always been able to spell well but her firiend whose
parents are both teachers has always struggled. I do think that some people
are more inclined to be good spellers than others although have absolutely
no proof to support that statement, just observation.

Did you catch the interesting show in the TV tonight about intelligence
testing? It was called "the Battle of the Brains". There was one
interesting snippet in that show. In Scotland, they found IQ tests done
decades ago by a large number of 11 year olds. They had tracked down many
of them (now in their late 70s/early 80s) and ran them through the same
test. They found that on average, their IQs had gone up 10 points.

I've always said that we (should) learn and continue to develop all through
life and I wouldn't mind betting that your parents did just that even if
they left school with a good education in just the basic 3Rs.

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...

:-)) The trouble with Latin names, is that when I use them and I tend to do
so a lot, I always seem to be accused of being a snob or a know it all. I
used to explain to people that the more interested one in plants and
gardening, the more likely one is to seek out the sort of publications that
use botanical names and that reading such documents leads to using the
correct names. That explantion doesn't seem to wash with many people though
so I don't bother doing that so much these days. I just think 'Idiot!' to
myself. I'm getting old and intolerant.