I've spent the day looking at jQuery plugin: Validation by Jörn Zaefferer. I notice that it works fine as long as you call the validate() method without options. In my little squalid world, as soon as I add options, like errorPlacement, I notice that validation ignores form fields that are not marked required. I also notice that many, many demos mark all fields required---or do not pass options. Am I writing about anything familiar here? Or should I astral project to a parallel universe?