Following up on the "why can't people write" thread, I've thought about that several times over the last few weeks. I started to think, why would writing be more important than, say, Math? I thought about a ton of jobs that had math, but english didn't really mean so much. Take software programming. You can write an application for the iphone, mostly using math and code, and make a million dollars or more. You can be a carpenter and build houses and buildings and not be able to use "your" or "you're" in the proper context. You can build machines, do woodworking, metalworking, work with stone and many other things.
It made me think- would I rather be good at math or english, and I'd have to pick math. Math has got me a long way in my career. Without it, I wouldn't own a house or have the things I have. However, I can't say English has been such a great provider for my income. It's nice to know, but can it make me money? Pay my mortgage? Put food on my table? So far, not so much for me.
Of course, English is very important, and this thread is done tongue in cheek, but it did make me think about which one I'd rather be good at. Not saying you can only have 1, but if you could be great at one and okay at the other, which would it be and why?