Paid or unpaid, the best way to attract talent is to have something tangible on offer. One of the main things that will turn people away from a project is the very real possibility that their efforts will be for nought. Many projects end up unfinished, stalled because the project lead lost steam, or was never ver dedicated in the first place. What the contributors end up with is, effectively, jackshit aside from possible portfolio pieces. Remember that what you're effectively asking is for someone to work on your dreams, for free.
As a programmer, nothing is stopping you from putting something together with placeholder art. Whether that means throwing together "programmer art" or temporarily using existing assets (sprite rips, stock art, etc) is up to you. By doing this, you are doing a couple of things:
1. you show a certain level of dedication (Ring of Charisma +1)
2. you end up with something tangible to entice talent (Bracers of Attractiveness +2)
3. you are able to get your game ideas in some working form, without having to wait around for artists (Helm of Intelligence +2)
The same thing goes for artists. While it could be said that artists have it easier, in the sense that it's easier to entice with pretty art, that's really not the case. Yes, it may be easier to attract publicity with art than with lines of code, but just having pretty art is not going to attract a decent programmer. For my own part, I have a game I would like to develop (a couple, really, but I'm fairly focused on one project for now), and for now, I'm doing all the legwork. Putting together art assets, doing research on the target system, doing more research on game mechanics and interface decisions, putting notes together on game logic, etc. This way, once I'm ready to hunt for a programmer, I will ideally have a coherent package to present. Additionally, he should be able to hit the ground running, since a good deal of groundwork has already been laid out.
As Adarias has mentioned, grammar does play a big role. Let's put it this way, if the "project lead" doesn't feel like this request to work on his dreams is worth his time to spell-check, let alone grammar check, then it sure as hell isn't worth my time to work on it.
But again, to me, it comes down to actively showing your dedication. I could look past poor grammar and spelling (especially for a non-native speaker) if something tangible and cool was on offer. Just stating your intentions is typically not good enough to attract free talent.