As the internet ages, the abuse of the language grows worse and the retorts are honed to gay rapiers.

That was both hilarious and very, very painful.

heinz site is 2020

That one took me a minute. Despite the theme of the page, I unfortunately took that at face value and was trying to figure out how a food manufacturer's web presence had anything to do with a romantic mishap.

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but when it comes to communication on the web/internets, I'm pretty flexible about spelling mistakes - especially since probably the majority of Facebook posts/emails I read are being typed up on mobile devices that make it difficult if not impossible to type accurately and also make it difficult to edit when you're done. (I've got an iphone, believe me I am familiar with this.)

BUT -

There's a certain point at which spelling or grammatical inaccuracies kind of slide out of "oops" territory and into "who-gives-a-shit" land. Thankfully, all the people I follow on Facebook know how to communicate relatively clearly, but several examples on this page would basically cause me to stop reading and move on. If you can't be arsed to type in a combination of upper and lower case, use at least basic punctuation so I know where your sentences end and begin, I'm not sure why you'd expect me to read, let alone comprehend, what you've posted.

This is why I tend to shy away from a lot of "communities" online and gravitate toward MeFi and MeCha. I can generally read stuff posted without having to decode it first.

I'm not a language prescriptivist, and I realize that over time this may become default usage, but I can't say I'm looking forward to it.

"I'm not sure why you'd expect me to read, let alone comprehend, what you've posted."

That's exactly the point of it.

I probably should add that I don't appear to have missed anything by ignoring them.

There's a certain point at which spelling or grammatical inaccuracies kind of slide out of "oops" territory and into "who-gives-a-shit" land.

There's that, and there's what I find even sadder, which is "I-never-learned-this-in-the-first-place" land. When you can arrive at adulthood without ever having been told that "sordive" is not how you spell "sort of" - it's not even a word - something really failed you.

I have recently been reading some educational research talking about how brain imaging is starting to suggest that as many as 20% of the adult population may have an undiagnosed form of dyslexia. THat explains a lot. Still, I think it's vital to learn to use good spoken and written English. You don't have to be a hardcore prescriptivist to recognize that it's a social and professional advantage and a necessary skill, no less than using basic mathematics to avoid screwing up your finances, using a calendar, or word processing. We weren't evolutionary selected to do many of these things, but doing them better correlates with better success, and it's reasonable to expect adults in an affluent civil society to generally have mastered the basics, understanding that there will be occasional idiosyncratic flubs and that it's a more difficult task for some than others.

This gave me a good laugh . Thanks for posting it

Right, Miko. It's not just someone accidentally spelling "bored," it's the fact that the person was absolutely convinced that that was the correct way to spell it (and what made it funny [though not ha-ha funny]).

Well, it's easy to point and laugh at people who don't understand their native language enough to use it effectively (I do plenty of it myself), but it's sobering to think that it is people of my generation who have failed the youth of today by refusing to teach kids how to spell and to use correct grammar in school. That particular experiment is now well and truly over, but society will be paying the cost for many years to come.

I remember speaking to my eldest daughter's grade 2 teacher many (many) years ago and she was incensed about being instructed not to correct spelling and grammar 'as long as the meaning is clear'. She won my respect by quietly refusing to do so, but many teachers didn't bother and that's why we have kids who graduate from high school without ever learning how to write or (sometimes) speak their own language correctly. Well, that and omnipresent TV, but don't get me started on that ;-)