Misspelling makes Baby Jesus cry.

I'm not teaching this semester, just guest lecturing in a few undergrad courses in my department (thank God - I enjoy teaching, but the chaos that comes with it would be way too much this semester), but next time I do, I plan to distribute this comic to my students on the first day of class.  I've just about convinced myself to pony up $12 for a poster to put in my office.  If I had a dollar for every time I had to correct the spelling of the word "definitely" in essays and homework assignments when I TA'ed an Intro class last semester, I could afford to buy some really nice bottles of booze to help me forget that these kids might one day run the country.

But undergrads aren't the only ones who are guilty of this.  I passed the comic along to a friend who is a doctoral candidate at my university, and we decided that those in academia are among the worst offenders.  It isn't abnormal for me to get an email from a professor or research supervisor with "your/you're" used incorrectly...in fact, it happens at least once a week.  Our mutual takeaway: if these fools can get PhD's, gosh darn it, so can we.