Muppet grammar grinch creeps into class

[OakLeaf]

Well, English was written for some 800 years before spelling was standardized, so it may be that standardized spelling is (was?) just a passing fad. Perhaps something intended all along to stratify society, or provide evidence of a writer's social class to a reader who might not be acquainted with him (since in those days it would've been almost exclusively "him").

I wonder about the text messaging though. Most of us are probably part of that "fastest-growing demographic" and most of us have probably been taught by our younger relatives how to use the predictive spelling feature. While kids four or five years ago might've used abbreviations and numbers to substitute for word sounds, nowadays it's quicker most of the time to key in the actual words.

I read a science fiction story a couple of years back - I can't even remember the plot, but there'd been some kind of disaster so the computers weren't accessible, and the thing about it was that everyone in the community knew how to read, but no one knew how to write. Interesting thought. I very, very rarely write any more, as in marking characters on a fiber-based storage medium. The closest I come to it is entering Graffiti! characters on my Palm.