Please don't leave on my account, BTD! (I'd hate for my pedantic post to make anyone feel bad.) LoT can be a crazy, rarefied place, but nobody here is stupid.

Not leaving. Backing away. Though here I am still posting.

Whatever. I never claimed to be an English major.

Hey now - I thought I said that message boards were exempt. ;)

Actually I'm in agreement with you, Betty! I like to criticize spelling/grammatical errors on a message board only under the following conditions:

The maker of the errors (TMOTE) is a known idiot who has posted something obnoxious
TMOTE is consistently and obnoxiously pedantic about spelling/grammatical errors
TMOTE has inadvertently written something they might want corrected
TMOTE can be quoted for teh funny (misspelled intentionally)

I can spell, and write well when needed, but I don't always bother on message boards. Because I'm lazy. :)

I was an english major, and before that journalism. I still can't spell.

What Flippy said.

Or:

I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt: the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let them forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure; and, when I have requir'd
Some heavenly music,--which even now I do,--
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my bammo.

Or nonsense words with perfect grammar:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe

:D

Real worlds with perfect spelling and grammar that still convey no useful information as in this current CNN.com headline:

Obama may end VP guessing game soon

I am of the camp of only using the correct spelliing of words. I don't care how many times "donut" has been used: the proper word is "doughnut." This is one of many words that have been created because somebody wanted to save a couple of bucks when having the sign made for their business.

How about when people advertise something for .59 ¢. I have been tempted to go in and order 100 of said item and only pay 59 cents for all 100.

Most people really can't properly proofread their own stuff. When proofreading something, I have to read it at least twice, in completely different ways: content/grammar and spelling.

I am cursed with finding typos. I see them all the time. I can be looking at a page of text (not reading the text; just looking at the page) and find the typos. It's weird.

BAMMO!

I've come to expect bad spelling, bad punctuation and bad grammar on message boards, and am guilty of it myself from time to time. When I see it in newspapers, books and business emails though, it bugs me to no end.

And typos aren't really the problem. It's two sentences running together without a period to separate them. It's seeing "affect" used when the person meant "effect." It's seeing the word "literacy" spelled incorrectly. These are the things that drive me crazy.