[b]New B!tching:[/b]

When people sign up to an RP with requirements they can't fulfil. Nobody's a winner, and nobody's even to blame. When I'm GMing, I typically stipulate that I'm not bothered about post length, really, but getting basic spelling and grammar right most of the time is important to me, and if they can't do that, it's not the RP for them. 

On the whole, I don't think there's really an excuse for frequently getting basic stuff wrong for people using English as a first language, and mistakes* like that, when regularly made, really do annoy me. It's even one of the stipulated criteria for Casual and particularly Advanced sections on this forum. I guess it's not their fault that they don't know better (otherwise their SPaG - Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar - would be more accurate), but I hate having to choose between putting up with something that really irks me, nagging a player about their SPaG during the RP, or sending that really awful "You're not up to scratch, sorry" PM.

It's been discussed in this thread, or its ill-fated predecessor, where the boundaries are for the dreaded Constructive Criticism, but surely basic SPaG really is an objective thing that can be demonstrably improved through a clear explanation? At what point is it acceptable to send somebody a PM along the lines of, "This is how an apostrophe works (ie: not the way you do it)"?

*When I say mistakes, btw, I mean ones that are caused by simply not knowing the basic rules of the English language. Typos, along with death and taxes, are inevitable.

[b]MetaB!tching:[/b]

When people like me complain about people with a worse grasp of English language than the complainant with three inevitable consequences:
[list][*] Somebody feels less confident about their own writing and is put off an RP (or a section) with standards they can definitely meet[/*]
[*] I get a reputation I don't feel is fair as an elitist[/*]
[*] I panic that I've made a typo in this b!tching and I'm going to get picked apart[/*][/list]