On Wed, 4 Apr 2001 12:16:18 +0100, Matthew Jones wrote:
> > I was at school from up to 1995 and grammer, hand writing and
> > similar were only lightly touched upon. IT was another subject that we
> > never actually did (other than read about spreadsheets leading to my
> > adult hatred of Excel) and as far as I'm aware none of my friends of
> > the same age did any real grammer in school so you can expect a fair
> > size chunk of 20-22 year olds to have no real grasp of what constitutes
> > good grammar.
>
> Right, well there's the difference then. I'm 29 this year and I was schooled
> during the seventies. Was anyone else of a similar age *not* taught proper
> punctuation and grammar at school?
I'm 30, and I don't *remember* being taught grammar at all. It confused the hell out
of me when we were all expected to know what prepositions, adverbs and the perfect
present were when I started learning French. Although I vaguely remember apostrophes,
I'm pretty sure I was never taught the proper uses of (semi)colons and dashes.
> Anyway, back to the point. Many of my peers and friends who were taught
> exactly the same punctuation stuff as me just ignored it and used things
> like "could'nt" and "samwich's" and so on. I reckon it's less to do with it
> being taight in schools and more to do with how much someone reads. If you
> read a lot, you see the correct forms a lot and it sinks in. Similarly with
> grammar, I reckon, although I have absolutely zero evidence to back that up.
Maybe I don't remember the grammar lessons because they were boring, or maybe they
were taught after I left at the place I move away from, and before I arrived at the
place I moved to.
--
Peter Haworth [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"I used to recognise C64 kernel and interpreter entry
points in car registration numbers as a game."
-- Paul Makepeace
