A gripe! (ANOTHER gripe, I should probably say...)

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I'm not the only one who has complained about this:

The WWW enables all sorts of people to have their writing read publicly (I guess published is the word I want), and we're beginning to find out just how terrible the grammar and the spelling of the average person is.

Just in a single user review on Amazon, I got (talking about shoes): "They run true to size, and ... fit my feet perfect!"  I would have preferred to see perfectly, but we know what he means.

"... The insole has a blue jell like material under the heal and ball of the foot."  The proper word, I think, is heel, speaking of feet.  But most times we can tell the difference, and deduce the intended meaning.

"They don't look like the walking shoes you see on the seniors making a trip around the mall, or trying to impress everyone with what you're wearing."  The good spelling on this one is wasted on the sentence.  The second phrase (or is it a clause?) is obscure; it probably has to do with the writer's observation in the previous sentence that the logo is not too big.  Are the seniors walking around the Mall trying to impress everyone with what you're wearing?  What they're wearing?  What the writer is wearing?  Why doesn't he leave the ambiguous seniors out of it?

Anyway, apart from annoying a small minority of people who were taught rules of grammar, syntax, punctuation and spelling, all these linguistically loose cannons are apparently getting their points across.  Furthermore, there is deep annoyance at those who use big words (unless they're the latest thing), and painfully correct language, which is described as pedantic.  So we're in for years of suffering at the hands of young writers who are less apt to follow rules and good examples than to feel the force, and write in a loosy-goosy style of writing.

[Continued]

I think what is happening is that people neglect writing until they're out of high school, and then they find that their friends can figure out what they mean fairly well, despite the horrible lapses in spelling and grammar.  They therefore proceed to write in public forums such as Amazon, Facebook, and sundry blogs as if only their much-forgiving friends were going to read their writing.  In addition, the idiot lobby has been very successful in squelching observations about grammar and spelling (orthography) whenever it comes up ---including some members of the English teaching profession, doing the squelching, I mean--- and so it becomes not quite PC to mention spelling or grammar in polite company.

When I was a kid, I was  moderately careful not to offend anybody.  Then, of course, in the sixties, the fashionable thing was to offend everybody equally, like Professor Higgins, in My Fair Lady, or Pygmalion.  In the Eighties, it was a matter of choosing carefully whom you offend.  In any case, not offending those who are irritated by poor grammar and spelling is no longer high on anyone's priority list.  People like me who are offended by poor grammar and spelling are called curmudgeons (or carmudgeons, and there might be a couple of alternative acceptable spellings) and considered irrelevant.  George W. Bush, possibly the least well-spoken President of the USA was more laughed-at than criticized for his poor English.  Yale University will never live down my scorn for having graduated such a fool.  On the plus side, though, he made several million idiot people out there more confident about their ability to someday make it into the White House.  It must have been startling to be set back by Barack Obama, arguably one of the most intelligent occupants of the oval office.  History will establish the wisdom of Barack Obama, but his intelligence is beyond dispute.

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