Friend of a friend teaches at a small college. She says that the best writer among the students at her school tend to be people from other countries who have undergone rigorous language training. Yep, they write better than many native English speakers, who often take writing for granted.

Now, that might be a special situation, but I have noticed that the really, really bad verbal diarrhea tends to come from (you guessed it, kids) native speakers. Foreigners are often more cautious writing in English. (Imagine that your Japanese is good enough to participate on internet fora, but you don't feel very confident about it. Naturally you'll dot your i's and cross your t's, or whatever it is you're supposed to do in Japanese.) Indeed, I daresay that the sort of stuff that prompted this thread probably comes mostly from native speakers of English. Only we would be so bold as to disregard the rules of writing.

Da Bing