G'day Q,
You're quite correct. I was just demonstrating how I learned how I could weasel out of the " vs ' situation when dealing with book titles. You probably already know this but EndNote is a popular (and, very good) bibliographic database for dealing with the various conventions and requirements used by editors for citations and reference lists. When I last counted there were more than 250 different templates for different journals and none was the exact way that the two Oz archaeology journals wanted theirs; I had to make up templates for use by local students.

Which requires one to understand syntax, in much the same way as I had to when writing Fortran. And when John wrote
A factor perhaps in the "grad students who can't write" is that most schools, where a thesis is required, have their own "thesis style specifications," and it's not uncommon for each school/department within a university to have "unique requirements." Students who have spent time and effort conforming may "just assume" that their thesis represents style and methods applicable everywhere. While quite obviously this is often not the case, their thesis may actually be the first thing they've ever written that was subject to "critical review"
I was on very familiar ground. I've lost count of the variations described by different parts of some universities as "Harvard" rules for citation and referencing.

This may excuse some confusion among graduate students when dealing with specific techniques but, as you and John both point out, the topic of the thread is really about felicitous (rather than barely functional) literacy.

As I implied above, many of the teachers of graduate (and other) students are unable to write correct (however defined) English; what's worse, they're apparently ignorant of their own ignorance.

That's one of several bugbears. I happen to think that lack of attention to detail is one and Katlaughing's description of a teacher who refused to even hand them back to her students saying they would be devastated by all of the red marks speaks to me of another. I'd interpret that teacher's reaction as showing she is more concerned about her standing with students than about substantive content; such concerns are common among beginning teachers who have not yet developed their armoury of 'classroom' techniques.

Rant subsiding.

Cheers, Rowan