Originally Posted by levite

That is f**king brilliant!

But in any case, I heartily sympathize with the OP. I, myself, can be a terrible stickler for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Probably comes from having been a county spelling champion as a kid, and taken special honors in English in high school, then minoring in English Literature in college, followed by becoming a writer and teacher. Now, I freely admit that when I am instant-messaging my friends, the rules go out the window: I don't capitalize, I have terrible punctuation, atrocious grammar, and occasionally employ abbreviations. But that's only for the sake of keeping my IM conversations at a speed resembling spoken conversation. There is no excuse for such lapses in e-mails, or professional correspondence of any kind, or in professional reports or academic papers.

I laughed aloud to see that some of the posts here wondered if such spelling was the result of the individuals not being native speakers of English. If only it were so! But having been a high school teacher for several years, I can vouch for the fact that our children have absolutely abysmal spelling and grammar. I have taught Honors-level courses for 11th and 12th grade, at an expensive private school, where I received papers and assignments that appeared to have been written by 6th-graders. I finally had to make a rule for my classes that any paper containing more than three errors that a spell-check and grammar-check would catch, or four errors involving homophones, misplaced apostrophes, or other errors spelling- and grammar-checks often miss, would be returned with no grade, and would require correction and rewriting within 48 hours in order to resubmit for a grade. Resubmitted papers showing the same or similar errors are docked a full grade. It was remarkable to see how a precipitous drop in the class GPA resulted in improved spelling and grammar!

It is simply shameful, the level of ignorance we tolerate in this country.