I see more and more frequently that people use payed instead of paid, an apostrophe to make a word plural, and butcher gerands.

People also use apostrophes to make pronouns possessive. That is totally wrong.

Since most everyone considers me to be incredibly stupid, it makes me feel very insecure to be around so many people who are even dumber than I. I have been told that I was stupid since I was a small child, so I have pretty much accepted that not everyone could be wrong about that.

I am stupid and have written better than many of my teachers since the time I was in middle school.

I was considered to be so stupid in grade school that teachers felt it pointless to even try to teach me. I mostly took my books and learned on my own.

I was treated like a little criminal and told I was a "troublemaker" by most adults around me from the time I was around two or three years old.

I often misspell the word 'rhythm' and not sure I spelled it right this time. I have misspelled it since early childhood, so I have given it up as a lost cause.

While people who misspell around me really annoy me at times, I do try to ignore it. I have accepted that my annoyance comes more from my insecurity than their errors.

I am concerned for my daughter though who wants to be a writer. She has no initiative to learn basic grammar. She thinks it is her editor's job to fix it. Hopefully, she'll end up with a teacher one day who inspires her in that direction.

Many who misspell are not stupid. They are merely either lazy or rushed for time.

I am currently a thesis away from finishing my master's degree. I chose one of my readers because she caught a grammar error on a paper I turned in couple years ago. I tested at 99% on a grammar test and needed someone to catch that other 1%. No other instructor had caught a grammar error in my papers since elementary school.

There are spelling mistakes, then there is "for all intensive purposes". That second one is related to intelligence.

/TOA