Hi tvman,
My apologies in advance but I think that your comment raised what for me is an interesting discussion and my reply is in no way aimed at you or anyone else. It is a discussion I had had with many people over recent years.
As a child I read a lot from the age of four and by my teenage years was reading at least ten books a week (I had the maximum six library cards allowed and had borrowed four from a friend who rarely read). This left me with a useful vocabulary and an understanding of how the language works. I have never been academic and would have struggled at school if the teaching of grammar had been as formal as it was before and after my time there.
In my job I was required to write reports for the criminal court and parole board and was very careful that my words could not be misinterpreted because of the poor use of punctuation or the order of the words. We were initially required to proof read each others reports and it amazed me how many people wrote as they spoke and did not bother with commas, paragraphs and even full stops. Spelling was haphazard and colloquialisms were often used. Strangly enough one of the worst was someone who had previously trained and worked as a solicitor. They only used a full stop at the end of a paragraph and never used commas or any other punctuation. When I asked him about it he said that they were taught to write like this at law school as it avoided misinterpretation? Together with several of my colleagues I was quite disparaging of people who could not use the language as it was supposed to be used.
I then bought an e reader. This allowed me to access some books which were self published and were often the first draft. I initially found it difficult as sometimes the word "there" was used all the way through regardless of whether it should have been their, there or they're. Apostrophes were often incorrectly used and words either misspelt or spelt phonetically.
However, after a while I started to realise that the quality of the story was not related to the standard of English. I have read many prize winning books where it has been a beautiful piece of writing in search of a good story. I could contextualise what the author meant when they used "there" even if it was not correct. If I imagined the person speaking the sentence rather than writing it then it usually made no difference. I found that some of the authors were poor writers but very good storytellers.
Sometimes people would not use silent letters when writing words such as Psychology and I have seen academic arguments to say that the silent letters should be dropped. It makes some sense but in the original Greek the P in psychology is not silent but is a single character pronounced as Psi and would be difficult to drop.
Words change their meanings over time and are often removed from the context that they were originally used in apparently meat meant any solid food, girl meant a young child of either sex and sly referred to someone having skills such as being dextrous or being good at sleight of hand. Often professions such as medicine, psychology, engineering or law have words misappropriated.
I have heard of English tourists in the USA being asked by Americans "can't you speak English". This may be apocryphal but I can believe it.
Even within a country words have different meanings. I remember a friend from Cumbria telling me that he had got a large stone from a dyke to put in his car boot to give his rear wheels more traction in the snow. It took me a while to realise that in Cumbria a dyke is a dry stone wall, where I am from a dyke is a drainage ditch and to the other person present it was an offensive description of a lesbian.
I love language and would prefer it to be properly punctuated and as Norberry found out I do like it when something comes out with an alternative meaning. I mean no offence to the other person and realise that it is often caused by a spellcheck, typo or even not being able to see a screen properly. If I thought that Norberry could not use English I would not have made the comments.
I have noticed on this site that if a new member is perhaps not as skilled in English and their first post is a bit confusing as a result, then often they will get no response for quite a while. I think that people sometimes do not take the time to consider what the other person is asking and forgets about the situation they are probably in and how anxious they are and wanting to get a response, even if it is asking them to clarify what they are saying. I will always try to reply if I think that I can help to clarify what the other person is saying or to signpost them to where I think they might need or want to go.
I was once privy to seeing a conversation on this site which was quite disparaging of some of the members not being able to use English properly (no-one from this group I hasten to add) and found it very disappointing. This was mainly in the context of people using English as a second language and I wondered how well they would di if they were asked to respond in Spanish, French German or even some of the Asian or African languages. Whilst good spelling and the correct use of the language can assist and I would prefer not to see the grocers apostrophe I would hate to see someone limited or disadvantaged further because they cannot spell or punctuate. Nor would I like to see the language stagnate. At what point in history would you fix the meaning of words. I enjoy the development of language, that is not to say that I will be rushing to describe someone as having "medalled" in a sport or "unfriending" people.
As a teenager I used language very differently from my parents and I sometimes have to get my son now to translate. Do you know if you are "woke"?
I hope that should Norberry or anyone else have the opportunity to take the micky out of my mistakes they would be as quick to do so as I was as I find it funny but I no longer regard my language as being as precious as I once did as it should belong to everyone, not just the ones who can use the grammar correctly.
I would love to hear what anyone else thinks.
Gragon xx
