Spelling and Grammar - lost in today's generation?

It's not different at all: people retiring in the forties of the last century would have felt much the same about the telephone. The fact that we can't imagine anyone not used to using a phone doesn't mean that it was a cinch: there's some great stories by Will Eisner about growing up in the Bronx in the thirties/forties where MANY immigrants had NO idea what to make of a phone (shouting loudly into the receiver, otherwise "how could someone miles away hear them?").

The same with the advent of modern transport: visiting someone on another continent is a regular possibility, rather than a dream, or magic.

People are always caught up by a technology gap.
It's up to those with their feet planted firmly in the present rather than the past to make sure they don't fall behind!

True, though people tend to insist that you be approachable anywhere and everywhere. Still, you speak the truth.

Land lines are a pain if you want to be left alone too, if I leave the phone off the hook I can almost guarantee someone will then call around in person because they couldn't contact me.

You're leaning against an open door with that one. I hate being made to feel such an old fart when I make a similar point and am told that language evolves by itself; that saying "different than..." rather than "different from..." is correct because more people do it than actually use the correct construction. I know the basis for the argument - language evolves thanks to the way that people choose to use it; and what may have been "wrong" once can become "right" so long as enough people do it. I hate that argument.

At work, I sometimes write marketing communications and the like; the other day something I wrote was rejected by our marketing team because I'd used semi-colons. They said "AXA brand guidelines indicate that semi-colons should not be used. Our customers do not understand them." Well, get some better customers then, that's what I say. I have also had things rejected because my sentences are too long. Eight words is recommended; twelve the absolute limit. Huh?

It's a shame really because the English language is really a beautiful language. As far as I'm concerned, if you don't know how to use there, their and they're; you are a moron. Or the difference between its and it's. Or the difference between you're and your.

innit bro :fist-touch: ya get me.

I centrufally concordonate.
The current insternation towards fallid lingual verbage is at the very misculum a deep and oputrant quarandry.

He just unzipped his trousers.

What I hear is the world revolves around you

Well said mate. We use to write with an inkwell, quill pen, and paper.

Yeah, but I bet it took you a while to get used to that having used stone and chisel for so long?

The usability of a phrase is often the reason to make a formerly bad phrase correct. It's called usus. I don't know about the English correctness rules, but in Poland we accepted that there is the usable norm and the formal norm. In everyday language a phrase like "different than" would be perfectly seen as correct, but as incorrect in, say, a parliament speech, press conference and things like that. There is a duality of norms, one used for formal situations, one of informal and this is what people probably mean by "language is (d)evolving". Simplification of language is regarded as one of the main processes. Polish language, in course of historical development, lost about 2-3 tenses, because of the simplification, also lost some language things due to preference of dual divisions to other types (consonants and vowels to consonants, half-vowels and vowels, and so on).

All these processes are very interesting.

I need to re-read that 100 times and perhaps i might understand your points

Different world