No worries, Twang ol' buddy! (Though you did leave an apostrophe out of "it's"! <img src=icon_smile_tongue.gif border=0 align=middle>)
Yeah, you're right. Not only do I enjoy writing and reading -- as well as used to enjoy teaching composition, before it started to consume too much of my time -- it
is hard to read something and not "critique" it, as you put it. I don't think I mean to; it's just that errors and the like just seem to "pop" out at me.
I can usually kinda turn that part of my brain off when I'm in here chatting with my buddies, but it gets harder when I'm reading something in a newspaper, or in
Reader's Digest or something. Maybe a lot of people do this, but I still find mis-spelled words and grammatical errors often in published works.
The bad part of it is, I can't bring myself to just "let loose" and type without mistakes. Even when I'm using colloquialisms (slang expressions), I have to spell them correctly! I even correctly punctuate when I'm chatting with my friends on instant messenger!
Aargh! It's a curse! (Notice the apostrophe signalling the contraction of "it" and "is"?) <img src=icon_smile_big.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=icon_smile_big.gif border=0 align=middle> When's deer season open again?
Discipline -- not desire -- determines destiny.