As I see it, the problem is that those of us born in the post war baby boom were generally well taught. We have seen standards slipping and sliding downwards at the same rate as tecky products have risen.

many of the parents of today are themselves riddled with bad grammar, spelling mistakes, use of the correct sounding but different word, (there instead of their and hear instead of here in a letter recently received). So how can they be expected to correct their children's spelling and grammar??
and the kids will only react with "what do you know anyway".

most of that came, I believe, from the relaxed attitude of a whole swathe of teachers who took the easy way out, who didnt agree with sports as there have to be winners and losers, who just shrugged and let the kids get on with it. This has been reflected in lowering of standards in exams, where poor spelling in maths isnt counted so long as the math is right.

.

I'm not sure if it's all the teachers fault.
I think the situation really began to deteriorate in the 60s and 70s when kids were given almost free reign to wander about their classrooms at will.

Prior to that they were all restricted to their own individual seats and desks and were easily individually accountable and controllable.

As someone who doesn't like grammar nazies, but also someone who dislikes sloppy writing, I don't know where I stand on this issue.

So it would be best to just pass, but I'm a bad passer as well, and passers' bad habits don't help.

Next.

So what is the missing letter in DVD's? The S simply indicates a plural, there is no possession or substitution.

I didn't get that either - & although there was indeed a dicussion on that link....... I still don't really get it

They were ordered to teach that way by the government, it wasn't necessarily their choice. For example, a lot of teachers disagreed strongly with phonics (teaching reading and writing via sounds rather than spelling patterns). This teaching method led to a whole generation of kids who can only write with the spellchecker turned on. And now the govt are talking about bringing it back!

"isk"

I'm not pushing this - I'm not convinced either way. The people who seem to think the apostrophe is acceptable are largely American so that might make the difference. Note that in UK IT, American spellings are often used - 'program' instead of 'programme'.

Oh I see (I think).

But that doesn't explain "Potato's £1/kilo" !

I went to school in the UK during the 80s and I can assure you we did not have free reign, or even free rein, to wander about at will!

yes, I can see the twisted logic in that now - I still don't think it's right though

do you know - I had never realised that it was spelled with a 'k' !!

The plural of DVD is DVDs.

Words ending in s usually add an apostrophe and another such as James's but the possessive of Jesus is always Jesus' not Jesus's.

That should confuse things!

[QUOTE=Fred James;10232445]The plural of DVD is DVDs.

QUOTE]

But if it were written D.V.D. then it would be D.V.D.'s.

OK Dick, I will be the sucker in this and ask........
who gave the kids free reign ??

was it the parents ? who arent there
little green men visiting for the day ?

or was it the teachers ?? who when I was a lad, had us restricted to our own desk (although at secondary we had lockers and moved to different classrooms creating huge whirlpools of pupils rather than the teachers breezing in)

or center instead of centre ?

HTML is written in American rather than English, as you will see if you look at the write-up for these posts.

actually come to think of it I was at school in the 60s & 70s & we certainly didn't get to wander around the classroom