I'll overlook the occasional misspelling of a word or two, or the occasional grammatical slip-up, but when it's rampant throughout a person's writing I cannot help but wonder at their education.

A lot of what is called "ADHD" today is simply a lack of a ruler wielding person in a position of authority...

I wood have, butt I've waisted awl my thyme reeding hear.

If you can't beat 'em, beat 'em! Since they're expectin' you to join 'em, you can take 'em off guard!

Proper punctuation remains my greatest challenge/weakness. Does it make a difference? Yes, it does. When the principal chided a teacher for not teaching proper punctuation, the teacher replied with a Hillary Clintonesque "What difference does it make?" The principal simply stepped to the board and wrote:

The teacher says the principal is stupid

Point well made. (for those not sure what the point is, consider the following examples of punctuating the sentence above).

"The teacher", said the principal, "is stupid."

The teacher said, "The principal is stupid."

Words mean things. It behooves us to use them properly.

One of the downsides to the net, to me, is that my own grammer and spelling has suffered from reading and seeing all the multitudinous ways of well.., shall we say in the spirit of things... "that ain't right". Then I catch myself defaulting to the more common errors. Luckily, reading proper books reinforces proper spelling and grammer.

Their.
There.
They're not the same.

Of course we could discuss you're and your until the cows come home. I suspect we would have better luck teaching pigs to sing.

I don't recall who said it, but it's true nonetheless, "The man who won't read has no advantage over the man who can't." Reading and thinking are important, yet our culture no longer values such activities. There's a shocking lack of interest in the correct use of the language, and the current trend is downwards. Modern technology has given rise to a generation which can text rapidly yet is incapable of transmitting deep, coherent thoughts since everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator - whatever can be abbreviated (why is that word so long?) into simple acronyms.

I do my best to NOT be a "grammar nazi" but language is meant to convey thought and to do so it must be properly used. This includes spelling (my high school "Language Arts" teacher signed my yearbook "I like the way you write, now if you could SPELL!" as well as proper differentiating between homophones. "Bear arms" is not the same as "Bare arms" nor even "bear arms" (as in the designation some give to a bear's forelimbs). Their, there and they're are as misused as your and you're and the list goes on. This, in my not so humble opinion, is a direct result of people placing more value on nonessentials rather than on solid basic education.

And to think, all this cyber ink spilled over the misspelling of 'gerbil'.

I really SHOULD get back to doing something productive today.

That said, I appreciate his humor.

Just for fun . . .

Eye have a spelling chequer,
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss Steaks I can knot sea.

Eye strike the quays and type a whirred
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am write oar wrong
It tells me straight a weigh.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your shore real glad two no.
Its vary polished in its weigh.
My chequer tolled me sew.

A chequer is a bless thing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right all stiles of righting,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The chequer pours o'er every word
Two cheque sum spelling rule

-- Jerrold Zar

WHAT IS A "GERBLE"?

It's a symptom of a culture that does not read nor value properly spelled language. He meant gerbil, I'm sure. He should have paid attention when gerble came up underlined in red by his spell check, although the suggestions for proper spelling (in mine, anyway) are a far cry from the proper one.