(no subject)
The SAT exam taken by high-schoolers to assess their college success viability indicates that vocabulary in the exam still contains old, not oft used words. It's recommended that kids read older books likely to contain vocabulary no longer used today.
Does it matter? Every time I listen to news reports, see written advertisement, pull up informational sites on the Internet, especially the Internet, correct language is falling right into the cracks between the keyboard keys.
Not even going to that place where the next generation is with texting abbreviations and lolcat-speak. That's too painful to think about to any depth.
One word I hear nearly every day is from the talking heads on the local newscast. So and so pleaded not guilty. Pleeeeded... really? I'm not finding that word in the dictionary. You used to say the correct word, pled, pronounced like shed, but at some point Pleeeeeded replaced pled. Why? Was this some experiment by professors of law to see how many students they could graduate with a misunderstanding of how to use the word? Did someone just lose a bet?
It's almost as annoying as their overuse of the word "Now", which I hear beginning every sentence spoken by those heads. Overused especially by field reporters, out in inclement weather, over-excited by the occurrence they're covering: "Now, the police have been on site since 2:30 last night", "Now, it's understood that the suspect broke the basement window to enter the house.", "Now, the victim found their cat under the rubble left in the wake of this fast-moving tornado."
Now, do you get the idea the word is overused? Now, is the head of the newscaster training department insisting the word be used to begin every sentence? Now, there's no way to tell how this annoying habit began and why it perpetuates.
Even in places where proper language directly influences a trust in the validity of what's written I find enough mis-use to cause that reflex I call the "head tilt of skepticism". At a website I use to check positions, or what functions users can perform, I notice the page has been updated to include my ability to now "click on the roll link...". I can't stop myself from sending a quick question to the webmaster to see if we can have some butter and honey with those rolls.
We stopped trying, and defend the progressively poor use of language and grammar with a sarcastic, "Nazi" label. It's one thing if you prefer to appear stupid and another if your stupidity pisses you off to the point of name-calling. Don't blame me if I'm the only one willing to point it out.