Go travelling, it will release you from your constipated mind and it may open up the world to you that you may not mind someone's poor spelling or english and appreciate their goodness.

topper

I agre wif yu hole hartdlee.

Communication only requires that information is conveyed in some manner and then understood by the recipient. Anything beyond that is superfluous. I rankle from time to time at the self appointed editors of this board that chide others for their spelling or grammer. If someone has good information to offer to this board, but is inhibited by these critics, we all lose.

I forget who posted on the other thread but I totally agree that we're not bad spellers, we're just bad typists! <BR> <BR>I think for the most part people get the gist of what we're saying. Some are just anal and have nothing better to do than point something negative.

I don't mind the mis-spelling, my pet peeve is the lack of capital letters in some posts. <BR> <BR>It makes the post harder to read, and implies a sense of laziness on the poster.

There are travellers <BR>and there are instigators.

There's nothing constipated about being a perfectionist as far as spelling and grammar are concerned. Far from it. The best travel writers from centuries past, whose works inform our travel today, were exemplary in their use of the English language. We should try our best as well. <BR> <BR>It's no secret (particularly to Europeans) that our public school system, and many of our colleges, produce ill-educated people. Evidence of that can be seen daily on the Fodor's board. If you want to put up with it and call it by some rubric like "all-inclusive Americä," well so be it. I call it a shame. <BR>In this day and age anyone with $600 can get to Europe. Doesn't mean he has to know anything about the continent (chances are his education hasn't taught him much about it, anyway), the languages, the customs, whatever. He arrives expecting a kind of cultural amusement park and oh! is dismayed or even disappointed."What the heck IS that castle, anyway?" <BR>The people who really traveled and informed us by writing about - Hemingway, Durrel, Lawrence - knew how to parse a sentence, knew how to spell, knew how to capture an image forever in print. They were SUPER constipated because they cared about every comma in their prose. <BR>You may not aspire to be a great writer, but if you want people to think your words are worth reading, listen up!

I have never read a book yet where the spelling and grammar were all haywire. I believe these publishing houses actually employ a guy to proof-read everything they put out. What a waste of time and money. I say, drop the price of the book by 25% and to hell with the accuracy. <BR> <BR>Or maybe communication is not enough. Maybe there is such a thing as enjoyment and appreciation of good writing. Maybe written texts should convey a bit more than just a heap of facts. Try reading some of the travel writing of that great American Henry James, and you might see what I mean. <BR> <BR>All I know is that the non-English visitors to this board think the Yanks are a bunch of hicks.