His children could not attend the funeral as there was a scheduling conflict - they were all attending the reading of the will.
Tell that to the professional editor to whom I was married for 10 years! She would red-line my cute post-it notes for errors and leave them on the fridge. 🤦
Leaving the nonsense behind is a recent move in the field and some of these "rules" might still be followed for the sake of understanding by those whose first language is not English. For example, I differentiate between "that" and "which" because my readers might have learned it that way and I don't want to confuse them. But their native English speaking colleagues ignore most of the "rules", so I don't have to worry too much about it.
There are some fields that use certain stylebooks that adhere to these made-up "rules" as well, alas.
I really need to find the stylebook that first laid out these rules so I can quote the name when necessary.
People who use "that" and "which" incorrectly are the worst.
I don't worry about it too much outside of my profession. Writing and spelling English is not easy, and some people really do struggle, like I struggle with doing math in my head.
When you take dialect into consideration, it's easy to see why some people struggle more with there/their/they're and your/you're. Where I come from, most people pronounce those words differently. In very large parts of the United States, they're pronounced exactly the same. So there's no "hook", so to speak, to hang the spelling on, and not everyone is good at rote memorization.
I remember in school struggling with "warranty" and "guarantee" because here they sound sufficiently alike and mean nearly the same thing.
