Is our grammar getting worse?

Vice Presidents and Prime Ministers are not immune.

Good spelling and decent grammar are no longer necessary ingredients for success, it seems.

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Former American Vice President Dan Quayle famously failed to spell the word "potato" - and even Tony Blair has trouble with "tomorrow".

Frost: academics try to work out what the student means

So, perhaps it's understandable that Britain's university professors are complaining about the standards of spelling and grammar in this year's finals papers in history.

Breakfast brought together History Professor Robert Frost and two of his students, to see whether the claims were really justified.

click here to see Breakfast's interview in full

Dr Frost explained that academics try to make allowances for students' mistakes, when they're writing under heavy pressure in exams.

He admitted that his own spelling wasn't perfect. In a test for the magazine History Today, he mis-spelt the word "buoyant".

But, he added, "There are some students who are incapable of putting together sentences and writing continuous prose."