> I was at school from up to 1995 and grammer, hand writing and
> similar were only lightly touched upon. IT was another subject that we
> never actually did (other than read about spreadsheets leading to my
> adult hatred of Excel) and as far as I'm aware none of my friends of
> the same age did any real grammer in school so you can expect a fair
> size chunk of 20-22 year olds to have no real grasp of what constitutes
> good grammar.
Right, well there's the difference then. I'm 29 this year and I was schooled
during the seventies. Was anyone else of a similar age *not* taught proper
punctuation and grammar at school? Back in those days, teachers actually
taught you, as opposed to writing long essays to justify performance-related
bonuses, or running around like headless chickens to prepare for OFSTED
visits.
They went on strike quite a lot back then, too.
Anyway, back to the point. Many of my peers and friends who were taught
exactly the same punctuation stuff as me just ignored it and used things
like "could'nt" and "samwich's" and so on. I reckon it's less to do with it
being taight in schools and more to do with how much someone reads. If you
read a lot, you see the correct forms a lot and it sinks in. Similarly with
grammar, I reckon, although I have absolutely zero evidence to back that up.
--
matt
"'scuse me trooper, will you be needing any packets today?
hey, baby, don't be pulling on my socket, okay?"
