"lifes are effected by it" -- Wow, is that meant to prove a point or did you mean "lives are affected by it?" Yes, I've known people to graduate high school and even college without knowing basic grammar or spelling, even in formal papers! I tend to have a more relaxed grammar when I'm online, using ellipses rather than semicolons, only capitalizing proper nouns, etc. What I don't understand, though, is how my English professor would give a zero to a paper that had any comma splicing and yet others can still manage to pass, even graduate, when their writing is unintelligible! If a paper is written on a computer, there's no excuse for spelling errors other than incorrect form of a word, typically homonyms (there/they're/their... it's/its... pare/pear/pair... whose/who's), but most word processors will detect this with grammar check. Even offline, there are dictionaries and thesauruses if you aren't sure of spelling. As for who's to blame, I think it depends on who you're talking about. The public school system I attended for a majority of my life had very little grammar and spelling education, even in gifted-, honors-, and AP-level courses. I learned more about (American) English grammar by taking Latin in high school than I did from my English courses. My psychology teacher had to explain the different forms of "they're/their/there" to students and would take points off of their papers if they made grammatical errors. I think that part of the problem is that students aren't being taught proper grammar and spelling and another part is that the relaxed, often grammatically atrocious, world of "texting" and "online speak" has lowered standards of written word. Now, I shall finish this off with a good, hearty *LOL*! dOnT i sEaM k0o1 4 tYpIn LiEk DiS??!!1one! c u l8r!