My new blog will focus exclusively on the decline of written and verbal communication skills. It is painfully obvious to most of us who have lived more than half a century that spelling and grammar mistakes abound in today's media in its varied forms. One prime example of a once-proud form of media that is now rife with error is the local newspaper. My town's weekly entry is not immune and I am sure you have grimaced when you have read your nearby edition. In a recent week's copy of our neighborhood happenings it took little effort to eyeball two separate errors in the spelling of the name of a music group set to perform in our fair city. Diamond Rio appeared as: Dimond Rio,
and Diamon Rio.
My query for us who want purity of language in our culture is whether there is any hope. Are we to throw up our hands in defeat? Is there even a small chance that the situation media-wide can improve? Is our educational system to blame? Are parents at fault? Is it a combination of factors that has brought us to the point where we shamelessly rely on spell-check and no longer consider using a dictionary or thesaurus for words with which we may be unfamiliar?
Please respond with your valuable input, with examples of the all-too-common mistakes, with insight into any glimmer of hope you see on the horizon. My grave concern is that we may be on the edge of an eternal black hole created by the thumbs of texters and the brainless skulls of editors/reporters/commentators and their ilk.
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8 comments:
Hey Bill! I'm glad to see you created a blog...I'll put it on my bloglist and be sure to read it! :)
I think schools are too concerned with the little kiddies self-esteem and teaching them politically correct garbage and have forgotten the 3 Rs - reading, riting [sp], and 'rithmetic.
The one that drives me nuts is when people use "supposebly" instead of supposedly.
I can't stand emails, letters, job applications, etc. where no caps are used and punctuation is horrendous.
We've come a long way, but sadly the wrong way.
Oops! I forgot the apostrophe on "kiddies" in my last comment! It should have been kiddies'.
Colchester, IL
Interesting comments about the poor punctuation and grammar in the written media today. However, it is also very evident in the spoken newcasts of today. It seemed to have started in the early seventies when students only had to use correct spelling and grammar in those particular classes. Teachers didn't care as long as they could get the idea in other subject matter. Good blog/Barbara Fassett
Funny that on a blog about grammar and spelling, I misspelled supposably as supposebly. Actually, most spell checkers will flag supposably. Supposable is in most dictionaries, but not all have supposably. I suppose I'll not say any more on this.
You've hit on a frequent conversation piece of my husband and mine! He often shows me errors in our local newspaper.
The thing that makes me cringe the most, though, is the oral use of "myself" instead of "me;" i.e. "Send it to my wife and myself."
You've hit the "nail on the head" with another one that irks me too. It is awkward as one doesn't want someone to take it the wrong way, but I feel compelled to bring it to that person's attention about their incorrect grammar. Many times I just let it slide because some folks are pretty sensitive. I'm not saying I haven't made mistakes myself, but I tried to do a good job of listening in school as I was there to learn those things!! I'm thankful my kids listened too. One was the county spelling bee champ twice and the other once. Both were class salutatorians in high school and on the Dean's list in college a number of times. I guess I'm bragging on them, but isn't that what parents are supposed to do? Blessings to you.
Bagman,
You wrote: My query for us who want purity of language in our culture is whether there is any hope... Is our educational system to blame? Are parents at fault? Is it a combination of factors that has brought us to the point where we shamelessly rely on spell-check and no longer consider using a dictionary or thesaurus for words with which we may be unfamiliar?... My grave concern is that we may be on the edge of an eternal black hole created by the thumbs of texters and the brainless skulls of editors/reporters/commentators and their ilk.
Can you elaborate a bit more about what you would want a "pure" language to look like? All languages change over time in a variety of ways. There can be lexical changes, spelling changes,and semantic changes, etc. See the Wiki link below that gives some basic description of how languages modify.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_change
Thanks for drawing attention to this problem though.
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