AIBU To Be Exasperated by Spelling Mistakes?

[DivingWithoutANet]

I can understand that once in a while spellcheck might confuse "you're" and "your", "his" and "he's", "there" and "they're" and retypes what someone wrote.

But some posts are just littered with these and other spelling mistakes with a generous sprinkling of "ur" for good measure.

Is it unreasonable to stop reading someone's post just because the spelling is awful? After all this is not a literary club so anyone can write how they wish.

Or those of us with a shit education.

Anyone who thinks bad education can be made up for with some fannying around on the internet is a fool.

Why bother with teachers? Phone the royals, tell them to sack off Eton. All you need is a computer.

Yabu!!

Shampoo I wasn't responding to the OP - I was responding to the notion of 'correctness' and that there are fixed rules (and yes I should have hedged my comment about linguists by adding 'some)'. ;)

I agree to some extent that children need to learn correct grammar and spelling - for all the reasons listed. I think what I object to are what seems to me to be an almost obsessional adherence to the notions of right/wrong - and little room for discussions about what grammar actually does in a language - (underpinning good communication not measure of moral/social standing)

I was brought up in the North East - consequently there are dialectical differences to my grammar that my South East based parents in law feel duty bound to 'correct' me on. How do you account for dialectical variations like that when you are deciding the 'correct' version of English grammar to teach?

As for no longer being able to 'share' a language if we don't maintain standards - you could argue that has already happened. After all what is English? And who holds the right to dictate what is Standard English? Is the European English (as used in the business of the European Union- so stripped of simile and metaphor) an English in its own right - or a variety of English?

I think that by adhering to strict rules (many of them stylistic) then we actually stifle what languages do naturally - which is change and adapt to their environment and the way in ways in which people communicate.