Comment: Davies Plain - The Outback Travellers Guide

You have to be joking. Billy Goat was a good stead climb. Nothing really challenging but an interesting track. Shame. But these firies do need quicker access than we do so fair enough. When do they grade the CWSR!!!

And Boobook you are so correct and not "american" correct either. I may be old school but I would expect the written word to be correct. And the data within also correct. Didn't find the Page grave until the next drive when we tossed (literally) the book out the window and used the info on this site (I think or maybe another).

Littering?? :-)

I am bad these days. Losing it I think. "CWSR" = "CSR" and "stead" should have read "steady".

Val - I agree that many people don't care about the written language. This has come about due to the computer age. Many people cannot type as quickly as their brains think of the words they wish to convey and they do not have the patience to take more time to review/edit their work. Unless the work is for a submission that has the potential to be financially, socially, or emotionally advantageous to them, there is no care factor. Now that life moves so fast, most people do not care to take the time to make their written words technically accurate.

We see this in processing ExplorOz Membership Cards. You would think that people would take particular care to type their own name and address in correct title case. ie. use a capital for the proper nouns. I often wonder if people are disappointed when they see their Membership card. We are also often surprised to see a lack of care with the typing of delivery addresses on shop orders - you would think people would take the time to get that right?!

With most people fully connected to computers and phones these days, I would argue your first point above that indeed they do rely more on written language than the spoken word as it is easier to send a message at your convenience, rather than to "connect" in a two way voice or face to face exchange. For the errors to be more prevalent now, it has to be due to people always being in too much of rush to care. This is something I don't see changing whilst the cost of living is so high and our addiction to spending/having is so out of control. That's what I love about travelling remote Australia - we are forced to life a very simple life for a few weeks and somehow we are reminded of how little we actually need to survive and be happy. When did life get so complicated? When we made it too easy to buy food from a shop. Think about it - humans in western society must work, or we don't eat. The cost of being a first world country is time.

Well said (written) Michelle, I wholeheartedly agree. And yes people do read messages etc, but by reading I really had in mind the kind of in-depth reading that requires deep concentration and engagement for lots of pages and a timespan of hours (not seconds). I frequently see people drop the "...ed" to denote past tense, as in "we use to go to the beach" and I can only put this now quite common mistake down to people writing as they hear the language rather than how they read it. As for lack of care and too little time .... the irony is that poorly written communication often wastes so much time. The motto of "do it once and do it right" springs to mind.

Rant over - though I doubt that we will see an improvement in language skills anytime soon. You are also pretty spot on about consumerism and the simple pleasures of camping away from all the complexities of modern life.

Cheers,

Val.

Gee's Michelle I thought such words of wisdom only came from us older folk. The best part is when you retire the weeks in the bush can become months, its great.

Re-read - Check
Spell-check - check (Don't know how Gee's got through)
Preview - check
OK to Submit

Haha, I love other people's view of age. I'm at the point of middle age where I'm neither young, nor old and my kids are morphing and needing me less (but actually more).

I would suggest that the best definition of "old age" for any person is,

"Ten years older than you are."

My 6 years old grandkids put their parents and me in the same group - old.
I am 70 and I do not not think I am old. Its all relative to ones current age.

I believe the real truth to this problem is that children are not taught the basics of correct english at school. This also includes maths and reading. Sorry, I couldn't come with any excuses for it.

We are hijacking this thread I guess but Munji, you are right to some degree with that comment. But we can't really say "they aren't being taught" - fact is, they are teaching spelling and grammar, speaking, listening and reading but 30 kids cannot all learn the same topic to proficiency in the same time frame unfortunately and there is the core problem again - time. There's a lot more than just the basic 3Rs being covered at school these days and as a result they "don't have time" to ensure that every child has mastered the basics. Remember - no one fails anymore either!

Michelle and Val

For a while in the late 20th century, schools actively taught children to spell phonetically, that is, by how a word "sounded" (sealing / ceiling - both sound the same but have vastly different meanings.

As a consequence, some Universities had top run remedial programs "English for Professionals".

It is interesting to note that most good spellers look to see if a word "feels" right. For example, ask a person to spell phonetically and when they have, ask them to put a "f" instead of the "ph". The good spellers will often react by a movement and say something like "Yuck".

Advertising signs often deliberately misspell to attract attention - lite / light - and this misspelling gets incorporated into our language. It's an American thing - they think it is efficient to reduce the number of letters.

And then of course we get the "your" instead of "you're".

Finally programs such as MicroSoft embed US English as their default spell checker and is becomes the defacto standard. Creeping imperialism :-)

Cheers
Andrew