Whenever I read statements like the following: Craig Hancock wrote: >. . . . I think the other point in Charrow's article, that people >don't know as much grammar as they used to, including teachers and >editors and professional writers, is very true, > I am reminded of the following petition from white women in Miller County, Georgia in September 8, 1863 to the Davis administration in Richmond, Virginia. Our crops is limited and so short [that we] cannot reach the first day of march next. . . . But little [illegible] of any sort to Rescue us and children from a unanamus starveation. . . . We can seldom find [bacon] for non has got But those that are exzempt from service . . . and they have no humane feeling nor patraotic prinsables in thare harts. . . . they care not ef all the South and its effort fail and sink so they swim . . . an allwise god ho is slow to anger and full of grace . . . will send down his fury and judgement in a very grate manor [on] all those our leading men and those that are in power ef thare is no more favors shone to those the mothers and wives and of those hwo in poverty has with patrootism stood the fence Battles. . . . I tell you that with out som grate and speadly alterating in the conduckting of afares in this our little nation god will frown on it and that speadly. (All brackets and ellipses are in the source -- Williams, David (1998). Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley. pages 113-4) I doubt that any petition written by ordinary people to their leaders today would be so non-standard. Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University > > To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/