Irritatingly grammatical (and spelling) errors enter common parlance, then become normalised, and then the dictionaries pick up the incorrect usage and reflect it: then users use the dictionary as evidence that it is (now) acceptable. Fowler's is a good example - it reflects "usage", not rules.

I have to say that I get increasingly flummoxed when I correct someone, and they ask in response "did you understand what I meant"? They are often correct - I understood, so maybe the rules are unnecessary? Either way I keep ploughing my own furrow, calling out egregious grammar when I see it, regardless of what the trendies think.

Coup Droit wrote:

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Yesterday, some person said to me:

"I not in deep group. Others working in light manner"

Yes, I understood she was saying she was not in a strong group and the others in her group were lazy so-and-sos

But just because I understood it, it doesn't make it good English !

(She's foreign, obviously, so it's not an issue, just that I agree with Chris - understandability is not the be-all-and-end-all)

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Blimey!  I wouldn't have understood it.  I needed your interpretation of it.  It will come as no surprise to anyone that I wholeheartedly agree with Chris, too.

Given how sensitive people seem to be about grammar/punctuation etc, I am thinking I might have to leave the board before I upset somebody 

JonH comes home wrote:

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Bob in Spain wrote:

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Given how sensitive people seem to be about grammar/punctuation etc, I am thinking I might have to leave the board before I upset somebody 

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 Im with you, Bob! I blame typing on phones for a lot of it! 

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That would be "I'm", Jon

Bob in Spain wrote:

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JonH comes home wrote:

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Bob in Spain wrote:

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Given how sensitive people seem to be about grammar/punctuation etc, I am thinking I might have to leave the board before I upset somebody 

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 Im with you, Bob! I blame typing on phones for a lot of it! 

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That would be "I'm", Jon

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 Haha/ that would also be my phone, Bob, and me never checking! I type and post and regret

it later. I think Indy follows the same school!

9vicman wrote:

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I agree that understandability is not the be all and end all, but I also think there are degrees of bad grammar. If someone said "the person who (rather than whom) I saw", I don't feel so strongly about it than someone who confuses it's with its. In fact bad use of apostrophes makes my blood boil. Maybe I am not so laissez faire after all.

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On the who/whom point, I quite enjoy reading the letters section of Metro during the week.  This morning I came across a response to one published yesterday.  I won't bore you with the substance of the debate, but this particular respondent, referring to membership of the Commonwealth, came up with what I think is the first example I've ever seen which demonstates complete ignorance of the difference between the two:

those [countries] which left it and those whom never joined in the first place...  

On aberrant apostrophes, I confess to reading a blog dedicated to the trials & tribulations of my home town football club, Middlesbrough.  One particular contributor's English is so bad that I rarely bother to read his posts because they're virtually unintelligible.  He has a particular problem distinguishing between "were", "we're" & (believe it or not) "where" (a not uncommon failing, as I know only too well from reading readers' comments on Times Online articles).  I glanced at one two or three days ago, as it was mercifully short, & he'd used "we're" twice in the same sentence when he clearly meant "were".  I give up!

I have no problem with typos - especially with people posting from phones, say, where the keyboard is really small, you might not have your glasses on, autopredict is often truly ridiculous etc etc

So a lot of 'we're/were' problems can be typos, especially if done from a phone

However, there are other things that are clearly just not understood - which, again, is not a hanging offence - I rather like it as a way of pointing out my own pernickitiness (is that a word ? ) - I see it, see red, and go, honestly CD, get over yourself

However, I love the people who use 'whom' randomly, thinking it makes them sound posh

On a separate point, why are auto-predict programmes so useless?

I have a pretty posh mobile phone

It absolutely cannot see past the first letter

If I type in 'she lived in Nanchester and was really veautiful' - it will autocorrect to 'she lived in Nanking and was really vertical' - I mean, is this really so challenging for the tech world ????