Welcome to the latest Shopper Rant opinion column. This week's issue is spelling errors. Join the debate by adding your comments.

SPELLING. No-one’s prefect. But we seem to be getting worse.

The proliferation of electronic communication hasn’t made people more stupid – they were stupid before – it’s just provided them with a platform to flaunt their ignorance.

Trawl the comments on any News Shopper story and the evidence is there for all to see – simple, basic errors and plenty of them.

If some brave soul tries picking someone up on their terrible spelling on any sort of forum, they’re rounded on by everyone involved, like a slit-open rat hurled into a pond of piranhas.

They argue that the purity of the English language is secondary to whatever point the author is trying to make, so it doesn’t matter if the words aren’t spelt correctly.

Take the word ‘definitely’. Everybody spells it wrong to the extent that it would definately be easier to somehow officially change it to appease our illiterate hordes. Maybe that’s a pure form of democracy – when so many people get something wrong perhaps they win the right to eventually become correct.

Maybe we should give in to the bone idle, the repellent scum who don’t care about these basics.

Like robots off a production line they come - texting at 10, emailing at 11, failing exams at 12, dole queue at 16, addicted to crack at 17, prison at 18, out at 20 and breeding children of their own by 21, children even less likely to succeed than their parents.

This descent into ignorance will continue unchecked, until the guardians of the English language are driven into the sea and a new language emerges which is based on proper English but which has been bastardised by the lazy.

There’s evidence that this process has already begun. There’s a supermarket in Medway which proudly advertises the ‘Stationary’ it has for sale on its upper floor. This is in two foot-high letters and has been there for months.

We encourage and refuse to challenge this slide into illiteracy at our peril.

What do you think can be done to get people to spell properly? Is so-called text speak to blame or is it bad schools or parents not caring? Add your comments below.

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