Whatever happened to grammar and spelling?

My daughter - now 33 - never seemed to have her spelling mistakes corrected when at school. I took to regularly reviewing her homework and helping her to correct her errors (no, I wasn't a teacher - I was a civil servant). She wasn't happy at the time, of course - but she's since thanked me because she can spell - and write fluently - when many of her contemporaries can't. In her high-profile career it's proved to be very useful indeed. I hope she takes the same approach with her daughter!
Sending this, having carefully checked for errors ...

My pet hate is 'thuh' before words beginning with a vowel - it's an awful Americanism which has nothing to do with 'textspeak'. For example;- Thuh Earth, thuh East, thuh arm, thuh ice, etc.

I also belong to a knitting forum. I find that the UK people usually have a good standard of spelling and grammar. The Australians are of the same high standard, but the Americans, well you'd have to see it to believe it. As knitters, they can't even spell "purl", they think it's "pearl". Then there's "kneedles". I could go on with many more examples. My opinion is that the UK knitters on my forum are mature ladies, who had a good, rounded eduction. It would be a different case if it were younger people speaking in text language!

There has always been a difference between formal English and colloquial speech - the change now is that young people don't recognise that difference. I believe some A-level entrants use textspeak in their papers.

Forum etiquette is to ignore mistakes in spelling and grammar, hard though it may be for the pedants amongst us - and I know we have many retired and working teachers in our number. We have had numerous threads where we have told of our pet hates (mine is 'between you and I) so this is not a new theme for us - but it is always interesting.

I don't know why everybody does not use Spellcheck, which takes only a second or two. I use it to correct my typos because I am a fast touch typist and my computer cannot always keep up with my fingers.
The mistake I notice very often is the use of 'loose' for 'lose' - I find this hard to understand as they sound very differently.
I have several dyslexics in my family and I know it has no correlation with intelligence - one of my grandsons has an MSc in marine biology and his dyslexia is so bad that he was statemented at school and given 25% extra time for his 'A'-levels.
I would hate to think that any member was inhibited in posting because they feared criticism of their use of English.