I work with many people who, despite being rather inteligent (Ph.D. or above), having varied social class origins and are from different regions of the country, confuse words or are unaware of grammatical errors. I imagine I would too, but both my parents are very literate and I read a lot of books as a child rather than watch television.
I imagine many of the issues being discussed here are the result of improper schooling, lower reading rates, poor grammatical and lexical support amongst family and friends and the all pervasive "dumbing down" of speech presented in the popular media. I doubt TXT speek or 1337 speek help much either. I especially dislike it when students use either of these in work they hand in. All of these problems would appear to be products of the environment we now live in. How to stop the downwards spiral?
Having just read what I have written above it all sounds very pretentious and Victorian. Hey ho 😐 . Smileys get on my goat too.
I ain't purfik neither. Somethings seem to have become ingrained 🙁