MisterShouty

From the age of, well, 1, I was taught how to talk, then read, then write and eventually how to navigate the finer points of English grammar. So, it should be no surprise to you that it annoys me to see spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors almost everywhere I look in this modern age of email, text messages and social media.

Long gone are the days when these issues were limited to the “Grocer’s Apostrophe” and people not being aware of the difference between knowing their shit and knowing they’re shit.

This complete lack of effort is so pervasive in everyday life that it’s not only accepted, but actually gets a lot of discussion around the concept of “Common Usage” becoming “Correct”.

This doesn’t just annoy me. This upsets me to a great degree. It offends my sensibilities as an English person and it makes a mockery of everyone that has spent any time getting to know and love this language.

The very idea that even well educated scholars make arguments for these examples of incorrect spelling and grammar becoming “correct” through common usage, is offensive to me. I know that I can come across as a snob on this blog, in many areas of life, but I really feel that in this case, I am expressing an opinion that cannot be reasonably argued against by ANYONE.

When I’ve mentioned this topic in conversation, the argument against me is always “but our language has changed massively in the past – you can’t say that what we have NOW is “correct” just because it’s current.”

I agree with that to an extent. But as usual, people that argue against me purposely avoid the point I’m making in order to argue against something else! Probably because they don’t have the mental capacity to make a good argument against what I’m actually saying.

Yes, language should evolve and adapt as people use it. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t. I have no quarrel with new compound words like “emoticon“, abbreviations like “lol” or even the use (or not) of the Oxford Comma. New words are always being created and used and they need to be embraced and included in new dictionaries, not only as a matter of record, but as a way to ensure the usage and meaning is well understood. Further to that, when existing words develop new meanings, I’m all for adding that new meaning to the dictionary definition.

But what I’m really against is when misunderstanding, ignorance and laziness lead to incorrect usage of what is a perfectly good word or term … and that term taking on a different meaning, even though another perfectly good term already has covered!

Things like “I could care less” to mean you don’t care about something. The complete interchangeability of “they’re”, “there” and “their” that is now essentially “common usage”.

If these people get their way, the dictionary will end up listing the three words to mean the same thing as each other and it will become the job of the reader to determine meaning my context rather than the job of the writer to make himself clear.

The way that society stands today, you’re more likely to get eyes rolled at you for correcting an error like this, than if you actually MAKE the error, and THAT is a real problem. Yes, I’m a member of “The Grammar Police” – a proud member.

When I correct someone’s grammar, I very much feel that I’m doing them a favour. After all, no one WANTS to be thick. No one WANTS to APPEAR thick on Social Media platforms. But, as you will all have experienced, MOST people DO appear thick, almost all of the time.

It’s not hard to put a capital letter at the start of a sentence, and a full stop at the end. Why on Earth do people constantly fail to do so?

Is it JUST to piss us off?

I recently read a report that a “period at the end of a text message, tweet or Facebook post is considered to be aggressive“. So, based on this, people are talking about how “Common Usage” might eventually lead to the loss of the full stop at the end of sentences.

What the ACTUAL fuck? Don’t talk nonsense. Have you ever received an email from someone that has seemingly forgotten where the full stop key is on their keyboard? That’s rhetorical – of course you have. Everyone has, and often, because “common usage” dictates that it’s perfectly acceptable these days. But I digress.

These rambling, nonsensical blocks of text take ages to decipher.

Is this evolution of the English language?

No. It is the metaphorical three steps back that has followed the one step forward that can be represented by the advent of electronic messaging.

I don’t ask that the English language be frozen and preserved the way it is right now. I just ask that it is not allowed to devolve to the point where people are rambling at each other like a pack of brainless idiots.

~ by mistershouty on August 23, 2016.

Posted in General Misery, People Skills
Tags: email, facebook, grammar, iphone, mobile phones, phones, sms, social media, test message, twitter