English grandma (;-)

Yes I noticed that but chose not to be pedantic again.
I also get irritated by the incorrect use of affect and effect

And me

Me too... but then my son sent me a very funny cartoon the other day where someone is being patted on the back and the caption says "when I console a grammar nazi I go 'there, they're, their'." . To my horror, lately, I find that I sometimes put an apostrophe in the wrong place, my excuse is, that there are so many mistakes about these days, that I am absorbing them by osmosis and no longer no write from ... sorry know, right from wrong.

Agree!

It's a bit frightening, isn't it? Especially when you've always taken pride in your good spelling and grammar, whatever other failings you may have...

I try not to notice or comment on posts that have errors in spelling and grammar (though I do have a bit of a chuckle if it is on a thread about spelling and grammar), because I would then be completely paranoid about making a mistake myself. As long as people are communicating what they want to say then I think it really doesn't matter too much.
The genre of writing on forums is about speed and response and open-mindedness. When I wrote official reports I checked everything five times; I really don't want to have to do that on here.
(So I promise not to point out that the OP said, 'I must not confuse 'discrete' with 'dscreet')

The ads that me me chuckle, as well as cringe, are caravans for sale ads, that state whatever number of "births", rather than "berths" in the caravans!

I find that many youngsters confuse there, their and they're. Affect, effect. Whether, weather. I asked my daughters, now in their 30s, about it (the older one being a teacher) about learning grammar at school and they said that even when they were at school they learnt only literature NOT grammar.

As I said my older daughter is a teacher and I had to teach her about the starting and ending of letters because they weren't taught that, unbelievable when they would be applying for jobs.

E.G.
Dear Sir/Madam Yours faithfully
Dear Mr/Mrs X Yours sincerely

When I get a letter with the wrong start and end invariably it is from a younger person.

CF pedants' corner!

It's odd; I taught English for many years, and always kept grammar and spelling to the fore, as did my colleagues. (State sector, comprehensive schools) so how come so many younger people claim not to have been taught them? Perhaps they weren't listening? Perhaps we didn't make it stick? Who knows.

Perhaps (seriously) they don't read? I think grammar, spelling etc are absorbed by a sort of literary osmosis while you read.

Plus ca change...

It sticks better when it's learnt in primary school. One of our teachers read us a story book called 'the Grammatical Kittens'. I can't remember the details, but I learnt all about parts of speech! It was in primary school that I learnt how to construct - and analyse - a sentence. I know that my elder GD was taught punctuation in primary school and my younger one, aged 9, recently sent me a story beautifully punctuated (by herself) and including at least one semi-colon - a rarity nowadays, but I find it useful.

It sticks best when those who are being taught want to know! I learned a lot of grammar in secondary school and my elder daughters appear to have been taught/learned good grammar at their state comprehensive in the nineties. DD3 appears to be being taught grammar. She also reads a lot and probably picks up good sentence construction that way too. I'm sure reading helps.

There's nothing like reading the classics to get an ingrained feel of the English language. The time to do it is when you are young and at school. Grammar is taught in schools but not backed up by talking at home. Listening to people speaking well, using correct grammatical structures is a huge advantage for the children growing up in these homes.
An education system can't even out the advantage that this kind of background gives to its offspring.
Nowadays it would help if families talked at all - and turned the TV off.

I think the point is that speaking and listening comes first, reading is built on that and then writing is built on reading. Obviously you still need to develop and teach all three at the same time, but children who come into school without the foundations of good speaking and listening are much more likely to struggle.

I suppose we are old enough to have -recieved- received enough English in our schooldays to be able to pick what seems most right from all the words in our heads.

There is certainly no shortage of cringe-making confusion on most forums but none more than my own use of 'prostrate' when I meant 'prostate'.

Can some kind person please explain the difference between learnt and learned? I'm never sure which to use.
I don't mean as in " a learned old man"

Ella46 There is no difference between them. They are both used as the past tense and the past participle of the verb to learn. So it's okay to say I learned French at school or I learnt French at school. Learnt is mainly used in British English and not elsewhere.

Well that's good....I'm not as thick as I thought!!

Thanks absent

Reflecting on Burgundygran's post. When I was an employer, I often received letters asking for work. My heart would sink as I opened a scruffy brown envelope, incorrectly addressed and often without a postcode, to find inside a torn off sheet of lined paper. The letter would invariably be undated and would begin "Dear Madame", (no I didn't run a brothel!); the writing barely legible, often on the slant and would be signed "yours truly". The content would be minimal. They would be filed in the wastebin, I'm sorry to say.
My question is - why is there not a module in this much feted school curriculum, which helps youngsters approach potential employers in a way that would inspire confidence in their abilities? Surely the primary aim of education is to make young people fit for employment?

I think it will be a sad day – and I suspect it is fast coming – when the primary aim of education is to make young people fit for employment.

Pretty useless if it doesn't. The rest is for parents, ineffective though many may be.

We have been here before – twice I think. Educate – to lead out. Yes, of course employability is a consideration but not, I think, and nor, as I recall, do a lot of former teachers on Gransnet, its primary purpose.

I am horrified that you have this sub-Marxist thought that all education should do is train children to work and the rest is up to parents mudskipper – or have I misunderstood your post? I do hope so.

I find the assumption that parents are ineffective rather odd. Is that all parents?

My excellent education gave me the ability and tools to make choices. Some of these choices were vocational - to teach in Africa and later to work in adult education.