Spelling and grammatic errors drive me insane. I watched "CBS Sunday Morning" today and they had a story about two guys who go around correcting typos, grammar, and punctuation on public signs, billboards and the like. They're my new heroes.

I'm also editing my brothers novel before it goes for a second printing and I've been appalled at some of his grammatical and semantical errors. Not many, but the ones I've found make me cringe.

I wouldn't normally dare correct something like this in a forum, but since you're clearly open to it, I must tell you - you forgot an apostrophe in "brother's" :P

Of course the great Bardic communicator in the English language couldn't spell for toffee!

Okay, maybe there wasn't such a thing as standardised spelling in his day, but by all accounts he couldn't even make up his mind about how to spell his surname!

Personally I think moderation in most things is best ... yes, good spelling and grammar are important, but so many people lack even functional literacy that we should encourage young people to read (which is where we mainly develop our ability to spell from, I think) and to write, whatever the imperfections ... and hope they improve over time.

Heh, I use "Alas" all the time. It's fun

"Thee" and "thy" have now been replaced with the (originally) more formal "you" and "your". Nowadays, "thee" and "thy" are seen as more formal, when they were originally used to show familiarity.

Do Quakers still use "thee and thy"? Or is it just in films?
I am harking back to Pat Boone and "Friendly Persuasion"

I don't remember hearing my great grandmother using those words, and her family were Quakers.



I didn't know he did that song, but know he's done quite a few!

I think they still use thee and thy in Yorkshire and I certainly still use alas.

Sue, I think so. My daughter's mother in law is from Yorkshire, and confused the hell out of us all by saying "I'll tell thee summat"... I can't reproduce the accent, but there were a lot of very confused Aussies !