Re your post 39, it is indeed sad that people cannot spell common words of their native language.
Yesterday, a Freeper wrote “women” when he clearly meant to write “woman.” It was not a typo because this occurred three times in one paragraph.
I was lucky in that I set my sights on college at an early age and read books with the intention of learning how to write grammatically and how to spell correctly. With regard to the latter, I paid a lot of attention to how published authors spelled words IN CONTEXT and memorized what I read. It made my educational experience so much easier than it would have been had I not done this.
My experience has been similar to yours. And yet we have what we have. I believe because our educational system has been dumbed down starting in the early 1980s.
Now there is Common Core which is the worst.
I’ve had the opportunity to have some in depth conversations with sixth graders, high school seniors and college seniors. It is amazing what they don’t know and the screwed up way they have been taught. It appears some of what they have been taught have been outright lies.
Sad.
This country will be in big trouble in the next 10-20 years as these folks begin to work their way into power positions.