Save the English language!
Okay, this one has been building for a while.
I've sat idly by and watched the desecration of the English language for the last 20 years in the name of human expediency. I've watched as the rules of grammar got accosted, roughed up for their lunch money, and left in the gutter. I've watched as spelling got the same treatment - although when schools started teaching something called "Creative Spelling" I did get a little agitated.
I was just over on Slashdot ("News for nerds, stuff that matters"), reading the comments to an article (I know, never read the comments), when I came across this gem of a sentence: "I mean, I agree, it would make a lot of sense for them to 'leak' this kind of info, to help qualm all the clammer about it."
I count two utter non-words in that sentence (three if you count 'info', but I'll allow it as a short-hand version of information).
This didn't bother me at first, but then I thought about it a bit. We are rapidly becoming an inter-connected world through the Internet. The people of China and India make up almost half that world by population. In either of those countries, it's not necessarily a valid assumption that the reader is fully conversant in English. As such, when you invent shit, you run the risk of alienating up to half your potential readers. This is not the way to win friends and influence people. Therefore, consider this a formal warning to the younger generation: get your shit together, people, or be left in the dust because nobody knows what the hell you're saying!
I've sat idly by and watched the desecration of the English language for the last 20 years in the name of human expediency. I've watched as the rules of grammar got accosted, roughed up for their lunch money, and left in the gutter. I've watched as spelling got the same treatment - although when schools started teaching something called "Creative Spelling" I did get a little agitated.
I was just over on Slashdot ("News for nerds, stuff that matters"), reading the comments to an article (I know, never read the comments), when I came across this gem of a sentence: "I mean, I agree, it would make a lot of sense for them to 'leak' this kind of info, to help qualm all the clammer about it."
I count two utter non-words in that sentence (three if you count 'info', but I'll allow it as a short-hand version of information).
This didn't bother me at first, but then I thought about it a bit. We are rapidly becoming an inter-connected world through the Internet. The people of China and India make up almost half that world by population. In either of those countries, it's not necessarily a valid assumption that the reader is fully conversant in English. As such, when you invent shit, you run the risk of alienating up to half your potential readers. This is not the way to win friends and influence people. Therefore, consider this a formal warning to the younger generation: get your shit together, people, or be left in the dust because nobody knows what the hell you're saying!