I’m talking about basic sentence structure too. I would never say “I am going to the store” because I’m part of the generation that fully embraced contractions, which also for whatever reason has found a million ways to say “go” without it being “go”. I’d say “I’m hitting the store on the way home, want anything?” notice there’s an evaporated “you” in there too.
It’s how language has always and will always evolve. Complaining about that is like complaining about the existence of weather. It’s unavoidable, it will exist, and whining about it just shows the world you’re a crabby old man.
I wasn’t talking about contractions. I’m using them in this post and use them all the time. Language without contractions was used for comic effect in the novel/Coen brothers film True Grit. You can use informal language in speech all the time. I’m talking about when it bleeds into written/standard use...when kids start writing term papers that way.
There was a movement in the 1980s to make the word “Like” a verb helper. As in “Like totally man can we like do this thing right?” It failed because it was a stupid idea and while people still use the word that way is it NOT correct English and would be marked wrong on a test. The word Irony defines a precise occurrence and watering it down is a bad idea and would invite the need for MORE language to explain what you’re talking about. If a student does that they should be marked down on an English test...and saying “everyone’s doing it” is not an excuse.
One of the most common errors in writing these days (even in College) is using ‘would of’ and ‘should of’ in the place of would’ve’ or ‘should’ve’. Do you think that’s OK?