I suppose I wasn't aware that Canada and the UK were likewise having issues with apostrophe abuse. But I see your point. I was more focused on the fact that it meant it was prevalent and fully ingrained in the culture.

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
en·dem·ic Audio Help (ěn-děm'ĭk) Pronunciation Key
adj.

1. Prevalent in or peculiar to a particular locality, region, or people: diseases endemic to the tropics. See Synonyms at native.

How does punctuation help in this case?

Damn it... fixed.

Its all about communication, and so while I am a "C" speller I use whatever tools to help me out sometimes, not with success. I'm Aural, so when I write, aside from the usual typos, I tend to dictate from the voice in my head and thus make lots of errors with homonyms, or mixing of with have. I don't over think it though because I'd otherwise not write anything.

That said, while spelling and grammar help create standards that facilitate communication, the fact that one can correct someone else's spelling and grammatical errors implies that the intended message got through just the same - so the corrector - outside the academic environment - comes across as self-righteous and annoying.

The following snippet of text has been circulating on the net for a while: "... randomising letters in the middle of words [has] little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. This is easy to denmtrasote. In a pubiltacion of New Scnieitst you could ramdinose all the letetrs, keipeng the first two and last two the same, and reibadailty would hadrly be aftcfeed. My ansaylis did not come to much beucase the thoery at the time was for shape and senqeuce retigcionon. Saberi's work sugsegts we may have some pofrweul palrlael prsooscers at work. The resaon for this is suerly that idnetiyfing coentnt by paarllel prseocsing speeds up regnicoiton. We only need the first and last two letetrs to spot chganes in meniang."

Fcuk taht.

Watching the Olympics I wonder what spelling and grammar issues the Chinese have

You mean like this?

Ah, Chinglish!

I simply don't agree. Every writing class I have ever taken taught that it is proper usage to include it. The practice of omitting it was started by newspapers in order to save space.

Use "whom" when referring to the object of a sentence, and "who" when it is the subject.

"Who was given the book?" (Subject)

"The book was given to whom?" (Object)

Remember that possessive pronouns have no apostrophes, and contractions always do.

its, whose, his, hers, theirs = possessive

it's, who's, that's, what's, he's, she's, etc = contraction