My wife insists that our girls be particular about their spellings, but I showed her my VP's posts that are full of basic problems, like 'your' instead of 'you are', and others...

There are more such - another senior person passed on a document via email, with the request : "... can everybody please wet this document for me...?" (some of us who recognized that it should have been 'vet', were wondering if it babies in diapers could fulfill that request better... )

...so maybe spelling does not matter, after all!

Trader could be correct. For example, "The Cleveland Browns have a roster full of traders and not too many keepers."

I taught my daughters early on that if their texts and emails had misspellings or poor grammar, they were ignored. They've turned that back on me and I've been ignored from time to time for my own incorrect spelling.

It is not just spelling, it is grammar. The list is endless, but I seem to notice this one quite often:

"I should of _____ (pick a verb)", such as "I should of bought that", instead of "I should have bought that".

I guess I should have been an English teacher ....

Oh, spelling definitely matters... but I've been told, "NOT so much on the web".

I remember a couple of years ago a guy posting, over on the Ridgid forum, his initial post with an apology for not being able to spell. My reply to him was basically that it shouldn't keep him off the forum; what mattered most was that he was able to communicate his thoughts, ideas, and experiences to the rest of us.

Yet, spelling should be important enough to show that we have some education, and perhaps some pride in what we are attempting to write. Certainly in business communications it's essential. But then so is the ability to properly punctuate too. Not very many of us have that capability.

Do I misspell? You bet I do. It's not for a lack of knowledge (certainly not with today's 'spell checkers'), but too often just a matter of rushing and not re-reading. I always care, and sometime will read a post I made an hour or so after the fact and realize how ignorant it looks. Often it's a dropped letter or just a poor word choice like "their" when it should have been "they're". Brain works, but seemingly the fingers are independent at times it seems.

I also, have a lot of numbness in my left hand, so too often I drop a letter. (But hey, it's the Web, hopefully I still got the idea across.)

Basically I think we are all subject to spelling errors and typo's from time to time. But, I do admit that there seems to be an abundance of not knowing the difference, or worse, just being just a bit indifferent about our own writing skills.



CWS

Lets eat Grandma!
Lets eat, Grandma!

Comma's save lives!!!

Grammar has not been taught diligently to either of my kids, the youngest of whom is a sophomore in high school. They insist on reading all of these (what I consider pointless) classics and do not teach them how to properly construct sentences.

The your, you're, yore, and its vs. it's, their, they're, there usage is deplorable.

I do this, also. One of my major pet peeves is the shorthand texting that is now intruding into every day correspondence in very manner. I have never used numbers to replace parts of words and it drives me crazy to see it done.

I don't know enough of a foreign language to say if this is more common in English than in other languages.

For example, these are my English pet peeves, but would these be swapped in Spanish?

Hear and here---these sound completely different in Spanish, for example
Except and accept--sound similar in Spanish, but are different parts of speech so maybe it's less of a problem in Spanish
Affect and effect--sound similar in Spanish

Regardless, misspellings irk me to no end especially if English is the first language. We were taught it in school, so what's the excuse? I especially hate seeing it in resumes and cover letters, and those applicants automatically get a mental black mark. I just don't understand how they would ignore their word processor's suggestion.

I do a fair amount of writing in my chosen profession, and can't help but notice these things as well. Not that my fingers always keep up with my brain, but I do think clear communication is important (which I think is a basic necessity in civilization) to avoid needless misunderstanding. I'm very grateful for the grammar and spelling checkers of today to catch my errors when I'm typing as fast as I can to keep up with the thoughts in my head.

Sometimes it's the degree to which people don't make an effort to get it right that is amazing and somewhat amusing, such as the CL cases of things like "Radio Alarm" saws from "Porta Cable".

For those that appreciate Weird Al Yankovic and haven't already heard his song "Word Crimes", I think you might like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc

My pet peeve is "gonna". As in "I am gonna go to the party" or "I am gonna kill you if you do that". Most of the time people replace will/shall with gonna. If you look at the way people talk - will/shall are nowhere to be found but gonna is everywhere. What is wrong with will/shall? Why does it need to be replaced with longer ugly complex construct?

While language certainly has suffered, the issues go far beyond just the usage of spelling and grammar. There is an entire school of thought that be behave in a manner that conveys any sort of formal education, the person acting in such a manner is acting too much like the man.

I truly fear for future generations.

I have been married to one for 32 years and I know she is at least doing her part to help establish a small segment of the next generation who can think, read, write and spell!

One of our pet hates is what is known in England as the Greengrocer's Apostrophe. It is essentially the mistake when somebody uses an apostrophe with a word that is merely a simple plural. Greengrocers probably get a bad wrap for this but a good percentage of their brethren were (and probably still are) guilty of the SIN.

When she sees one here in a store she makes a point of speaking with the manager and pointing it out.

Don't be such a h8r

What about nuclear vs nucular? I cringe every time I hear the POTUS say "nucular", let alone when the CEO of a nuclear power plant manufacturer says "nucular" at a professional meeting for engineers!