BigTruck wrote on Aug 30^th, 2009 at 2:18am:

This is the only forum I frequent, mainly because text & leet speak are banned. From what I've seen the standards here are generally far higher than the average Internet forum or chat room. I like to think that my influence in the early days had a small part to play in that.

I've never had problems with spelling but I make as many mistakes & typos as anyone, probably more than most as I'm a rotten typist. My obsession is not so much with spelling but the fact that most people can't be bothered to read through what they've written & correct any mistakes. This sloppy attitude seems to be prevalent right through our society these days. I can only put it down to the education system & the way pupils are taught from a very young age.

I can't speak for Fozzer but when I was at school our work would be rejected if it was untidy or contained too many mistakes/corrections which meant writing it all out again. There were no computers in those days so everything was hand-written in longhand. We also lost marks for spelling mistakes. This applied to work in all subjects, not just English, so we soon learned to make sure it was right first time by reading through our work before submitting it.

Unfortunately education standards started slipping soon after I left school. This was long before the Internet & mobile phones so they cannot be held fully responsible. As a result it appears that the majority of teachers doesn't consider spelling important. They have problems with it themselves so obviously cannot spot their pupil's mistakes.

I don't expect anyone will bother reading this but it's good to get it off my chest.