As the founder of this thread and the author of the much-slammed introductory post, may I defend myself?
Actually, the introductory post was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek: sorry that did not come across. And the thread itself I visualized as a sort of twin to the FLAME THREAD, i.e., as a place where people could come and gripe about the mangling of English on SI, in the nation, etc., thus relieving them of any lurking temptation they might have to be rude on other threads to nice people with bad grammatical habits. In other words, its whole philosophy was anti-grammar police, not pro-grammar police. (Have you noticed that posters on other threads who actually do try to correct their adversaries' grammar invariably make even more mistakes in their own posts?)
I soon realized that I should have called the thread "SI Writers' Lab" (or something like that) rather than "SI Grammar and Spelling Lab," which sounds stuffy, schoolmarmish, & etc. However, what's done is done. And after we got our initial gripes off our collective chests, the thread did, as has been pointed out, evolve into something more benign, reflecting the loving interest in language that folks here share.
Personally, I haven't posted to this thread in months, but I have been following it with pleasure.
jbe
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