I'll shut up if you will.

Chas dont be too hard on Donny he cant remember everything when in a rush and sometimes just forgets to use punctuation and the thing about yours and your's I agree with you kinda like their and they're they mean different things but donny says he doesnt care i am having a hard time writing this without punctuation its just something i was taught to do in grade school and i can remember being punished for not using the proper punctuation and contractions i can't stand writing like this so i am going to quit period

Could you possibly imagine how difficult it would be to read a newspaper, book, or any written communication if a journalist or columnist were to eliminate punctuation, capital letters, expletives, etc... from their writings? As a retired journalist and columnist I cringe when I see the English language butchered as it is on many Internet forums. I also tend to grit my teeth when I hear a sportscaster during a football game use words such as "git" in place of get, and many other improper pronunciations of simple words used in everyday speech. When I was a newscaster that was referred to as "Lazy Speech."

Grrrrrrr!

Gary

I hope our non-American friends for whom English is NOT their first language, don't take offense or think this is directed at them. Their 'second-language' English is 100 times better the average American's second language.....that is, if we had one . In fact, that always amazes me; that so many people from non-English speaking countries can communicate effectively, both conversationally and technically, in English. So what does that say about us? Extreme arrogance?.....or just plain lazy. I suspect the latter since we don't even seem to care how we speak our OWN language. But hey, that's America....the land of FREE SPEECH, however convoluted or insulting to the ear it may be.

chas

If you want to see the biggest culprits regarding grammar,punctuation etc.look no further than Facebook.

chas, I think there are a few factors that might be taken into consideration. One, is that in speaking to people who have been raised in a Europe, I have found that, primarily due to the proximity of and interaction with neighboring countries, Europeans just naturally seem to learn another language. From what I have been told, a second factor is that in most European schools English is a mandatory second language. Another thing to consider is the fact that we do not know how the general populace in any country speaks their own language. For all we know, they may speak their own language as poorly as we speak ours.
I would say that Americans who study a second language enough to be conversant in it probably speak it better than they speak 'English'.

As for what we hear on TV, especially during sports broadcasts, I am often amazed at the fact that the announcers, analysts, etc. are all graduates of prestigious universities - allegedly. And unfortunately, it is not limited to TV or radio. Every day I find typos, poor grammar, misspellings, etc. in our one and only statewide newspaper. In fact, today in a sports article it said "... showing how venerable a team can be", when the writer meant to say "... how vulnerable a team could be".

The shame is, it is only going to get worse, as the younger generations use more and more abbreviations in their texting.
And the fact that many (most?) schools are no longer teaching script opens up a whole new conversation.

Back to the OP ... Saturday, driving up to Rhode Island from New York I saw some snow flurries in Connecticut. Only lasted about 10 minutes and nothing stuck to the ground ... maybe just Mother Nature getting things ready ...

it waz snowwing hear in buffalo to!!

Isn't it ALWAYS ?!?