[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Mlo, it has been mentioned several times in this thread that the true target of our sometimes vitriolic criticism is laziness. None of us is going to be laughing and pointing at every little mistake made by someone who is obviously still learning English, as those who take the trouble to learn a foreign language at all are clearly not guilty of the sort of bone-idle ignorance of which we are complaining.

We are talking about posts which have blatantly been composed and submitted without any thought whatsoever to their meaning, content or legibility, apparently just for the sake of having said something. It's not a diatribe against poor spelling per se, but against the attitude of mind that would rather put (sp?) after a word than spend two minutes looking it up in a dictionary.

To my unmitigated shame and disgust the people who most commonly exhibit this indifference to the written word are people for whom English is their first, and in most cases only, language. That these are also the people most likely to respond with "but it doesn't look like it sounds" only increases my despair. The intention of my own comments thus far, both here and in a similar vein elsewhere has been to attempt a reduction in the number of thoughtlessly inelegant posts on this forum, not to crow over others' less proficient command of the language.