Poppy’s!!

Oh Witzend - live and let live. My daughter has a Master’s and I still have to correct her occasionally- I think predictive spelling on phones and tablets is the cause .

I saw Poppy's, bristled, ready to come in with Poppy's what? then realised it was Pedant's Corner.

Having a Master's degree does not excuse poor spelling.

It's not so much the inability to make plurals of words ending i Y so much as the inability to understand the difference between the 's' used to denote a plural and the 'apostrophe s' used to denote possession.

I'm afraid I put it down to the era of teaching English when anything went so long as the reader could 'make meaning' from what was written and grammar was a dirty word.

Not that insistence on learning 'grammar' for the past decade has made much difference because the 'grammar' curriculum which was brought in was highly technical and unnecessarily complex 😡

I'm afraid I put it down to the era of teaching English when anything went so long as the reader could 'make meaning' from what was written and grammar was a dirty word.

Child-centred education was a result of the Plowden Report. Correcting spelling and grammar in red ink daunted a child's imagination and could give them anxiety. Apparently.

Having a Master's degree does not excuse poor spelling.
I can remember when the ethos changed; a member of my family has a Master's (not in English) but is not great at spelling. He was at primary school in the 1960s.

Now autocorrect is to blame in many cases. It has some strange ideas.

I remember being taught possessive apostrophes and plurals very clearly. 2nd year juniors in the 1950s. Several examples, clearly explained and demonstrated on the blackboard, then some examples to copy and complete, then an exercise from a text book. Stayed with me for life.
My parents were always insistent on correct grammar and spelling, yet both had left board schools at 14. I have a large collection of postcards from pre-WW1 belonging to my grandmother, mainly from her large family, all educated at the local village school. Yet to find a spelling mistake in the messages.
As a primary teacher I do remember the spelling and grammar don't matter in the seventies and eighties; it is all about communication. Not in my classroom.

crazyH

Oh Witzend - live and let live. My daughter has a Master’s and I still have to correct her occasionally- I think predictive spelling on phones and tablets is the cause .

My dd1 has a Masters, too, and I’m pleased to say she once had a mark deducted from one of her MA essays, because of a ‘dangling participle’. Her SPAG was generally immaculate but she had to ask me what that was.

This was in around 2000 though - I wouldn’t care to have to guarantee that the same standards still apply in that Russell Group university. .

I was in Secondary school in 70s. In my school we were not once taught how to pluralise words ending in 'y', or how to correctly position the apostrophe to denote possession . In fact we were taught no grammar at all in our English lessons, as far as I recall.
Looking back, I actually feel quite angry about that, though I have managed to fill in a lot of the gaps myself since then.
Most subjects were taught very well, so I don't understand why English was so abysmal.