It's one thing to make mistakes, but there's spell-check right there!  Use it!  And when you don't know the difference between words like, their, there, and they're, it's just sad.  Come on, America!
215139
Yes, it does, especially knowing that they are going to be the next workforce.
383210
Well, a spell check would be a good thing. It's seems a bit nonsensical.
309968
yeah you make good points. I would like to point out though that in some other countries, there is a greater emphasis on spelling and grammar. \n\nThis sort of "lazy english", although prolific among the younger set all over the world, shows up in ridiculous amounts even in "normal" writing in the US. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen the word "websight" in articles published in the NY Times?!! It's scary. \n\nI can't think of any other specific misspellings right now (words that are written phonetically instead of correctly) in esteemed publications and the forums of the general public, but I catch them fairly often - if I see any, I will post an update here.
667003
And you forgot that they don't use the spell check that's available. Sad, isn't it? It's getting to the point when there are less and less intelligent people.
290347
My pet hate is 'I done this or that...' We slaughter the English language. My nephew came home from school with a marked assignment which was to tell a story about his best holiday. Granted he is only 9 and his imagination and use of words was fantastic but his spelling, atrocious. His spelling mistakes were either not picked up or corrected incorrectly by his teacher.We were appalled as when questioned about this his teacher's reaction was 'We encourage imagination, not accuracy'. What! No wonder children cant put a sentence together if teachers cant.
199194
People are lazy and indifferent. Chatrooms certainly don't help.\n\nI'm from England, and I think it's ridiculous that I'm tested on English by a bunch of Americans (the SAT, the Regents, the GRE). I'm also sick of professors correcting me when I spell "defence" with a "c" or "speciality" with an "i."\n\nThose words are SUPPOSED to be spelled that way, you dumb college professors!\n\nI don't have a problem with Americans spelling "speciality" without an "i" or "colour" without a "u," but don't expect me to do the same.
524045
Yes, how can you? I mean, look at the way you write: no capital "i", no "an" before a word that starts with a vowel, the use of the first form of "can" when you actually meant "could" and, oh, God, that monster: "peoples"!!! The plural of "people" means all the people in a country (you didn't mean that, did you?). And, hey, where did you put the mark of the genitive case? \nPeople are stupid, indeed. I would have voted you for the illiterate of the year.
649485
You are using the wrong spelling of your possesive pronoun!! It should be "Their"!! Not "There", which is a location!! Stand corrected!! 2 points for me!! Yahooooo!!!
285681
As pretty513 has just confirmed - many Americans are quite dumb. I have no idea whether this is the fault of the education system. The UK's education system isn't great at the moment, but I came through it being able to spell and use correct grammar. Going by the spelling and grammar of many of the Americans on here, I think their education has failed them somewhat.
501549
It drives me insane, particularly on here. There is a thing called spell check that people seem to have difficulty finding. When chatting it is a little more acceptable, not much but a little, because there isn't the convenience of spell check. What's worse is when you correct someone or mention they utilize the spell checker in any context the person asking the question becomes highly offended. For anyone offended by my response now I am going to show you how easy it was to make sure everything was spelled accurately because I had left a few mistakes intentionally. Now watch. Wow, took me 10 seconds to fix all of my mistakes.
241639
My guess is that you're looking primarily at people writing online. AOLspeak/chatspeak is not representative of American spelling ability. Note also that this is rampant in the UK and Australia as well. I've such things in French and German too. There's an annoying perception that spelling just doesn't matter online, and it's not just in America.\n\nAdditionally, however, English is a hybrid between Anglo-Saxon (Old English, or 'Englisc') and Old French (Latin-based). Because of this, there's a lot of inconsistency in the language. Also, since most of us don't study Latin or Anglo-Saxon, we don't know the roots from which the words are formed.\n\nTo add on, the above answers complaining about your grammar and such are wrong in that:\n* 'Spelt' is a word. It's chiefly British, but is a perfectly acceptable alternate to 'spelled'\n* It's not 'grammer', but 'grammar'. Common mistake they should have caught while whining about your other minor errors and non-errors. 9They also failed to capitalise 'English'.)\n* 'Spellings' is a plural noun. The spelling of a word can be right or wrong, and the spellings of words can be right or wrong.\n\n(Yeah, Shawn's answer was just awful.)
667977
Thank you!  It drives me crazy too.  People also need to learn how to use their, they're, and there.  Than and then is also annoying.  My biggest pet peeve though is people who think orientated is a word.
7667
I agree with you, but some people are just too lazy or type too fast (and don't realize their mistakes). Unless Yahoo! was to add a spellchecker that checks the spelling of all posts, I don't see these people improving their spelling and grammar.\n\nAlso, there are people on this website that haven't learned correct grammar or spelling (because they are new to the English language).
632819
I'm extremely surprised by that too, and English is not even my native language. I don't know who's to blame for that, I guess that  everything you mentioned has an influence, but in my opinion the main reason for incorrect spelling is that people don't read as much as they should and therefore they don't get used to the correct forms of the written words.
498110
Pretty typical. Way over half of the bashers can't spell and don't know the difference in their, there, and they're...not to forget the difference in to and too, don't start me on the grammar.
33162
Ok, this isn't a very good place to make a judgment on how well people can spell. \nFor one, there is a wide age range here. I have seen children as young as 11 here, so obviously they are more apt to make a mistake.\nSecondly, people make typos all the time.  This is an informal setting so they are not as likely to spend a lot of time correcting mistakes, as say they would be when composing a buisness letter.\nThirdly, how do you know who speaks English as their first language, and who doesn't just by reading the question.  I don't think that you can possibly know that.\n\nIf they had this same type thing set up in Spanish speaking countries, or German, Or whatever language, I think you would find just as many people making errors in their own language too.  I think it is a little unfair to single out Americans when I doubt you are actually comparing this evenly with everyone else.\n\nThat all said, it does bother me when there are excessive amounts of misspellings.  A typo here or there, I can understand, but some I've seen are ridiculous.
360382
You spelled it right, it is the pronunciation that most get wrong, they say gover-ment most of the time, people tend to forget there is a "N" in there.