Originally Posted by
Saracen
I don't know if standards are lower now than they were when I was at school, and I don't know how I could tell.
What I do know is that standards on forums are lower than school standards in my day, but is that any surprise?
My spelling is generally very good. My typing, on the other hand, lets me down. And to top it off, if I'm typing a post for a forum, I'm not about to spend the time it takes to carefully proof-read every word. I do that when I'm getting paid for what I write, and you lot aren't paying me so you'll have to put up with typos.
Also, while my grammar is pretty good, that doesn't mean you won't find, for instance, apostrophes in the wrong place. It isn't that I don't know where to put them, it's ..... oh all right, it's laziness. I'm quite capable of thinking one thing and typing another. If I spot an apostrophe in the wrong place in one of my posts, or a "they're" when I meant "there" or "their". on one of several similar things, I'll correct it. And I generally give posts a quick scan through. But if I miss one, I won't lose marks because of it, so you lot get what you get.
And finally, I'll use some techniques .... like this .... in a post, because it's a conversational style that works, even if it is grammatically incorrect.
In school work (which would have been handwritten, not typed, or in exams, or in paid work or business communications, I do take care not to let mistakes slip through .... and a few still do.
So you lot can't even tell what my educational standards are like, because mistakes are more about the medium I'm using, the care and attention I give to picking the up and to my typing skills (or lack thereof), than they are about what I do or don't know, or what I learned in my schooldays.
And therefore, as I'm not often exposed to the work of youngsters in an environment where standards matter and they might exercise care, I can't tell whether the generally lousy standard on forum posts is lack of knowing better, or as with me, lack of willingness to spend extra time making sure fings are wright.