Nice one Smiffy, I'd be unable to run a 1/10th marathon, so you have my full respect and admiration.

Excuse me while have a quick whinge about misuse of the English language. Recently seen not too far from here, and a few other places recently, usually ebay. The replacement of the word 'have' with 'of'. As in 'I could of studied English at Oxford if I wasn't such a cretin'. I can see how it's happened, people use 'could've', 'should've' etc in conversation, and think the words they're using are 'could of', it's not, it's an abbreviation of 'could have'. FFS stop doing it now before it becomes accepted.

Well said that man!

It's a pet hate of mine too and, despite moaning at Taffy for doing it, he's still doing it! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

pissing in the wind mate

welcome to grumpy middle age

Sean

I blame Janet Street-Porter and her Yoof programs back in the '80's, she attempted to make incorrect spelling and terminology appear 'cool', today it's done from ignorance due to the decline in the quality schooling.

Example: I leased a house from a teacher a couple of years ago who came to visit to see how things were going, I was working on a painting at the time. She saw the painting and asked several questions about it, so I asked her if she painted?

"Oh no I know nothing about art...although I am the art teacher at our school" she said without a hint of irony.

"We all got together in the staff room, and realised that not one of us knew anything about Art, so we decided that I might as well do it!"

The most shocking thing was that this was a woman in her late 20's, she was a PE instructor with neither talent or interest in art, what could she hope to pass on to those kids?

Perhaps they have the same approach to English these days?

Indeed.

LOOK AWAY NOW if you are easily offended by extreme cynicism!

I don't know if it's like this ADHD thing, where a lot of people will say "in my day there were just naughty kids, nowadays there is medical label for it"... BUT...

...there seems to be a lot of Dyslexia about. Esp. on the internet. On forums or where comments are invited there are loads of posts where people will say "soz im dyslexic" (note the only word spelled correctly is the most complex?). Usually this is an answer to a comment along the lines of "wot wld u no u cant evn spell LOL"

So my problem is spotting a symptom of dyslexia as opposed to a symptom of laziness.

I know nothing about it, but can a person suffering from dyslexia really not see that they have hit two letters while typing when they read it back to themselves? Are they really unable to recognise that "I" should be a capital when referring to themselves?

*I'm not taking the mick, these are honest questions I have about people who suffer from dyselxia.*

I know my spelling isn't perfect and I have a VERY limited understanding about grammar (maybe the fault of the education system or maybe I forgot to remember what we were taught?) but I always read what I have written or typed and always check words when I'm not sure about the spellings. I even try to "TXT" in full words and use punctuation, unless I'm one or two letters over... when I might lose a y and o from "you"!

Lately I've completely lost my way about its and it's, I will practice what I preach and go and read up on it now. In a minute.

In most cases, it's not dyslexia, of that I'm pretty sure. Granted, there will be some genuinely dyslexic people on the internet, but most people think "oh, they can see what I mean and it's just too much effort to write it properly". Well, here's a thought ... it's also a bit too much effort to read it, and why should I put the effort in if you can't be bothered?
I must be getting old, although I've always been a bit anal where language is concerned.

"It's" is short for "it is" or "it has"; the apostrophe signifies a missing letter. "Its" is posessive: in common with other pronouns (yours, hers, his, etc.) it doesn't have an apostrophe in the possessive case, whereas everything else (John's car, the dog's bowl) does. No I don't know why this is.
Apostrophes are useful:

"my dinner was cold so I ate my sisters"
"those old things in the corner are my husbands"

See?

Posessive case explained above.

I think the rise in 'Dyslexics' might be largely down to poor skills at some level, whether they be spelling or concentration, although I did once meet a genuine Dyslexic before they became a fashionable excuse for laziness. (and you worried about cynicism!)

I don't like the modern trend for explaining things by giving it a blanket name. Nor by calling it something different. I used to suffer from what was known as Manic Depression, but now I'm bipolar I feel sooo much better.

Windscale in Cumbria had a very bad reputation for being tainted by nuclear radiation, so they called it Seascale, there, problem solved.