As for spelling, I think that’s a little more important, especially in certain fields, but I still don’t think it’s that important. Most kids loathe spelling, and why not? It’s all rote memorization. Why not spend more language-arts time teaching the kids reading, etc? For most people, if they read a lot, they’ll pick up the spelling anyway.

Cherrye, whoa, someone stole your Grammar Girl book?! That’s a little intense. I can only imagine they must have needed it more than you did.

At first I thought Bob was being a bit harsh, but realize he is indeed technically correct in the realm of Old School writing.

However, the English language is evolving, to where ‘that’ is becoming acceptable when referring to people. The rules of grammar have relaxed quite a bit and I think we are in the midst of a big change.

Rules that were previously red-pen no-no’s are now becoming increasingly acceptable — things like ending sentences in prepositions, beginning sentences with ‘And, But & Or”, and incomplete sentences/fragments. Why is this? Because people are comfortable with reading at a conversational level – they want their written material to read well when read aloud or to themselves.

Turning “Where did you come from?” into “From where did you come?” sounds stilted, antiquated and awkward, and it’s about time the written word is catching up to a more colloquial form of communicating.

Where is this all headed? Well, that’s anyone’s guess.

Or should I say: “That’s N-E-1′s Guess?”

#6

“…writers THAT visit…” “THAT”???

Let us all remember, when writing about people it is always, always WHO!

rsh