How's your spelling and do you reply to all?

There are two occurrences that I would like to address in this diary entry.

One simple e-mail in my inbox this morning was all that I needed to get inspired. It was from the president in the school’s parent club. It read:

HI All,

        Parent club meeting tomorrow, if your about would relly love to see you all there.

When I had parent-teacher meeting with my oldest daughter’s English teacher I was very proud – yet somewhat surprised – that she is one of the best students in her grade. My daughter who is not a native English speaker, my daughter who has spent all her school years in American and British schools abroad, with less than a handful of native English speaking students in her class; she is passing her English class with flying colors. How is it possible that she is so much better than her Australian class mates whose mother tongue is English? I am surprised and appalled by the written English I see in e-mails, on Facebook and on blogs – all written by native English speaking adults. Have people forgotten the spelling we all learned in school? Is cyber communication to be blamed, that we no longer need to write correct sentences or even be bothered to check the spelling because the important thing is that we quickly get the message out and that everybody more or less understand the message? And how can we expect our children to spell correctly when we cannot even set a good example? 

This e-mail lead to another development that I frequently see. The e-mail was sent to 48 persons, most of us do not know each other and most of us cannot be bothered to attend these meetings. Many of the people who want to communicate with the president click ”Reply to All” and we all get e-mails like this that I copied and pasted:

Good morning, sorry unable to make the meeting as have gone away go

Why do people ”reply to all”? If it is a small group and we all have an interest in knowing if everybody’s coming like to a small luncheon or a brunch with friends – by all means, reply to all! But how can all 48 people on the list possibly have any interest in knowing that this unknown person is not able to attend? So please hear my appeal: do not reply to all unless all is expecting a reply!

Sand sculptures in Frankston - completely irrelevant to the text