Quote:
Originally Posted by teh603
I went to one of the most expensive Christian schools in town. Everything I listed earlier was taught as grammar instead of style. People even got a week of grammar detention for failing a special test given every six weeks. Believe me, they were in-freaking-sane about making sure everyone knew the nitpicky details of grammar.
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Grammar and spelling needs to be just "good", IMHO. If you go over a book again and again making sure that all the nitpicky details are correct, then you are just wasting time and money.
The reason? Because *most* people's grammar and spelling are not good enough to detect these small mistakes. I'm sure I'm making small mistakes in Dutch, English and (somewhat bigger ones) in German all the time, but most people won't even notice.
However:
your vs. you're
there vs. their vs they're
then vs. than
it's vs. its
where vs. were vs. we're
...
You have to get those things right; I don't perceive them as being small mistakes, but as blunders.
In Dutch, we have words that sometimes end on a T, a D, or DT. Many people don't know the simple rules for this, and they just start guessing. They even go as far as "guessing" in case there is no question what should be written.
Dog -> Hond. There *is* no word "Hont" or "Hondt". You just look like an idiot if you write that.
Wood -> Hout. "Houd" and "Houdt" do exist, but these are different inflections of "to keep". They mean something completely different.
If people make such mistakes, then (IMHO) they shouldn't be writing.
Oh. One of my English teachers always livid if you used "with" as a word to end a sentence with. Is that really something one shouldn't do?