daily life: i went to grammar school you know.

So a discussion at work got me a thunking. As you have noticed from previous postings I utilise a large quantity of 'run-on sentences' with very little punctuation. This is a deliberate act and is often challenging, sometimes I remove punctuation intentionally to give the illusion of ramblings; my posts are actually carefully planned and edited prior to posting. Well I am changing it up for this post so you'll see a lot more punctuation.

Anyway, I realised I am a bit of a 'grammar nazi', always finding fault with others and in particular a certain colleague who isn't a native English speaker. The problem is that I enjoy it so much, despite the fact English is frickin' difficult to learn and I was completely incapable of learning even basic French, German, Spanish or Latin, I find fault with the almost perfect (but not perfect enough) English of my colleague.

Sometimes I've catched caught completely incorrect use of language, but most of the time I'm just being a twat and for that I am sorry. But it still doesn't detract from the fact we need people to enforce good standards of English.
While I studied for my GCSEs and A-Levels only 5 marks were awarded for correct Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar, this even included English exams. The point was obviously not to punish those with dyslexia. The by-product was that correct use of grammar and the ability to spell just wasn't drummed into children in order to pass the test. There is a completely different debate on 'Teaching to the test' that I won't go into now.

But what about the parents? My dad used to be pretty hot on my grammar, mum can barely string a sentence together, but dad was a completely different story and ensured my grammar was top notch. But now we have a generation that can't spell or correctly punctuate a sentence, they certainly aren't going to ensure their children's grammar is impeccable. No more 'thick ears' for saying 'sheeps'.

I have no solution to this problem, that isn't my job, but at least I can continue picking up on my colleagues mistakes, that always gives me a warm feeling.