Why don't people spell or use grammar properly?

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Excluding people with dyslexia, of course. And excluding genuine typing mistakes.

So many people misspell (and use in wrong context) your/you're, there/their/they're, to/too/two, and the stupidest one- then/than.
When you get to a certain age, how can you not know the differences between these spellings?

And when people point it out, they get abused like "Omg you're such a loser!! I don't care if I'm spelling it the wrong way, **** off."

I'm not talking about when people use slang like: "Ppl tlk lyk dis an dat enit, u knw wht I mean, yh? Or dey jus use da occasional abbreviation lyk 'ur'."
I mean like proper sentences where all the words are spelt correctly, but if you just use 'your' when it should be 'you're' or vice versa... Why?? They get so annoyed and call people who do spell correctly losers/sad for caring, but the differences in the English language are there for a reason, right? :s-smilie:

I don't point mistakes out (unless it's in someone's essay and I want to help them) but it does really annoy me to see those mistakes. Does anyone else find it annoying, or do you think I'm a loser too? :rolleyes:

I was just thinking about it because I see all these Facebook groups/pages with spelling errors in the titles.

No one ever corrects spelling and grammar any more because it's seen as pedantic, but what's actually happening is that young people who haven't been taught to spell properly are influencing others on sites such as Facebook. My primary school teacher was wonderfully 'old-school' and pulled us up on most things, such as saying "Me and Jane did this" instead of "Jane and I did this". She also used these weird spelling cards (I can't remember what they're called) that were evil but also efficient. She made my table spell 'onomatopoeia' and taught us about semicolons in Year 5. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers aren't like this and claim that it's about creativity. But what we're seeing is an erosion - not a development - of our language.

Take the word 'unique'. It is unique: it means 'one of a kind'. Yet it's being misused everywhere. The BBC is especially bad. Over the past few months we've had "very unique", "somewhat unique", and even "quite unique". 'Unique' now means 'unusual', thanks to general misuse.

I've also noticed on Facebook that it's become really cool to say "your beautiful" etc. I don't know why it's fashionable, but it is. And this isn't just dyslexic people. It's people across the nation, many of whom I know. A lot of them did quite well in their English GCSEs. We were told that spelling didn't really matter any more in English papers. Call me a cynic, but that's most likely the government's attempt to make it look like the education system's improved by lowering the test standards.