[Barefoot]

Originally Posted by Sidney Lanier

Russ, I'm with you. Those little annoying errors just jump off the page/screen at me. Particularly notorious on professional websites of significant businesses is the misspelling of 'canceled.' Yes, there should be only one 'L' (at least in this country; in Great Britain it has two). And we see it all the time.... Now be honest, everyone; did I EVER mention silly stuff like this before? I'm mentioning it now in the context of the thread!
Back in the '60s, when I had briefly ventured into the 'ed biz,' I had to go off periodically for 'war games,' and the mail clerk didn't like me much because of dozens of letters and boxes of goodies I'd get from my students. I once got a very funny (too funny, thinking back...) card from one of my brightest students who wrote a letter on the back of the card, at the end of which she had written, "Are you mentally correcting my mistakes?" At that moment I realized that that was exactly what I was doing! With everything I read!!! The errors would just catch my eye!
Bright, if the punctuation is a comma or period, it goes BEFORE the quotation marks; if it's a semicolon or colon, it goes AFTER. And if it's a question mark or an exclamation point, it goes before OR after, depending on whether it applies to what's INSIDE the quotes or to the whole sentence. End of lecture. There'll be a quiz next week...

OMG Sidney, and I thought I was OCD about the English language! I pale by comparison. In Canada we spell a lot of things differently. Honour, neighbour, etc. But we still send our sons to fight wars along side the US troops.

I've just managed to combine political with girl talk with Russ' spelling lesson. Too late at night for me, good night moon.