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This Embarrasses You and I*: Grammar Gaffes Invade the Office in an Age of Informal[...]
WSJ ^ | June 19, 2012 | Sue Shellenbarger

Posted on 06/20/2012 6:30:54 AM PDT by Constitutionalist Conservative

When Caren Berg told colleagues at a recent staff meeting, "There's new people you should meet," her boss Don Silver broke in, says Ms. Berg, a senior vice president at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., marketing and crisis-communications company.

"I cringe every time I hear" people misuse "is" for "are," Mr. Silver says. The company's chief operations officer, Mr. Silver also hammers interns to stop peppering sentences with "like." For years, he imposed a 25-cent fine on new hires for each offense. "I am losing the battle," he says.

Managers are fighting an epidemic of grammar gaffes in the workplace. Many of them attribute slipping skills to the informality of email, texting and Twitter where slang and shortcuts are common. Such looseness with language can create bad impressions with clients, ruin marketing materials and cause communications errors, many managers say.

[...]

Mr. Garner, the usage expert, requires all job applicants at his nine-employee firm—including people who just want to pack boxes—to pass spelling and grammar tests before he will hire them. And he requires employees to have at least two other people copy-edit and make corrections to every important email and letter that goes out.

"Twenty-five years ago it was impossible to put your hands on something that hadn't been professionally copy-edited," Mr. Garner says. "Today, it is actually hard to put your hands on something that has been professionally copy-edited."

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: communication; education; literacy
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To: Reddy

The real culprit is the publik skool system where self esteem, political correctness and liberal brainwashing is more important than teaching grammar.

&&&&
Bingo!

In the fall, one of my sons called me regarding a grade received by his stepson in the child’s seventh-grade “language arts” class. My son, who was appalled that the kid had received an “A” on a composition filled with spelling and grammar errors, had been told by the teacher that the creativity that the boy had displayed in the piece was worthy of the grade.


121 posted on 06/20/2012 8:26:34 AM PDT by Bigg Red (Pray for our republic.)
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To: Sudetenland

Magna cum fraude you mean.


122 posted on 06/20/2012 8:28:29 AM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they were.)
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To: HIDEK6

Both can be understood by about the same percentage. The masses can understand “proper” English but it feels unnatural so the don’t use it. The grammar crowd understands the masses just fine, they just like to complain.


123 posted on 06/20/2012 8:28:51 AM PDT by discostu (Listen, do you smell something?)
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To: Constitutionalist Conservative
For how many years have we heard the ad on the Limbaugh program..."People judge you by the words you use."

I work in a corporate environment. I am amazed at the lack of communication skills among the people I interact with daily.

Mainly, it is people under the age of 40.
I suppose it is true. There is no school like the Old School.

124 posted on 06/20/2012 8:29:23 AM PDT by Bloody Sam Roberts (My dog, yes. My wife, maybe. My gun....NEVER!)
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To: NCLaw441

Imprecise != illiterate.

The rules might be long standing, but they never reflected the mass use.

If people understand what you’re saying it’s not misuse, and it’s only unattractive to people that care. It doesn’t suggest a lack of care, it suggests a member of the masses communicating to his peers, talking the way they talk.


125 posted on 06/20/2012 8:31:58 AM PDT by discostu (Listen, do you smell something?)
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To: getitright

...irregardless of whether the young employees had been properly orientated...

&&&
Your right. They could of learned alot more if they would of studied there English good.


126 posted on 06/20/2012 8:32:19 AM PDT by Bigg Red (Pray for our republic.)
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To: mommyq
Ummm . . . because that is the assertion they have all made about Fearless Leader; "graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991." Ridicule only works if the target has been making absurd claims.
127 posted on 06/20/2012 8:32:32 AM PDT by Sudetenland (Member of the BBB Club - Bye-Bye-Barry!!! President Barack "Down Low" Obama)
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To: Slump Tester
Where's yer grammer?
My grammer's in the kitchen baking cookies.

"Is your mother home?"
"No, she ain't here."
"Watch your grammar."
"She ain't here, neither."

128 posted on 06/20/2012 8:35:11 AM PDT by Fiji Hill (Deo Vindice!)
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To: discostu

You’re a reverse snob.


129 posted on 06/20/2012 8:36:27 AM PDT by HIDEK6
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To: Constitutionalist Conservative

Mr. Silver also hammers interns to stop peppering sentences with “like.” For years, he imposed a 25-cent fine on new hires for each offense. “I am losing the battle,” he says.”

You’re the one who hired them. So “like” it.


130 posted on 06/20/2012 8:36:35 AM PDT by WKUHilltopper (And yet...we continue to tolerate this crap...)
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To: Sudetenland

Remember when Obama said “President Bush has invited Michelle and I to the White House” and the press ignored it.

President Bush invited *I* to the White House. LOL

Of course he can’t spell Syracuse either. He must be good at something. He went to Harvard.


131 posted on 06/20/2012 8:37:05 AM PDT by ladyjane
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To: discostu

BS, you’re defending subgroups who cannot write or converse in proper English and that failure is due to their ignorance of the language. Twist it as you wish, there are standards in our language and they should be defended. But apparently, you don’t think so. So be it. We just don’t agree.


132 posted on 06/20/2012 8:37:30 AM PDT by OldPossum ( "it's" is the contraction of either "it is" or "it has"; "its" is the possessive pronoun)
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To: ladyjane

“Remember when Obama said “President Bush has invited Michelle and I to the White House” and the press ignored it.”

You didn’t expect the press ‘corpse’ to bring that up, did you?


133 posted on 06/20/2012 8:39:06 AM PDT by WKUHilltopper (And yet...we continue to tolerate this crap...)
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To: jiggyboy

“Well, I mean...”

&&&
Yes, I noticed about 2-3 years ago that “I mean” had become the standard sentence started for many political commentators. They seem to use it to replace “uh” or “um”.


134 posted on 06/20/2012 8:40:37 AM PDT by Bigg Red (Pray for our republic.)
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To: Constitutionalist Conservative


135 posted on 06/20/2012 8:41:05 AM PDT by CodeToad (Homosexuals are homophobes. They insist on being called 'gay' instead.)
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To: Sudetenland

He’s also terrible with noun and verb agreement.

And did you see Michelle’s senior thesis at Princeton?


136 posted on 06/20/2012 8:41:29 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: misanthrope
You never begin a sentence with “And”. It’s a rule.

The Bible is full of sentences that begin with "and." This seems to occur more in the Old Testament books translated from Hebrew and not so much in the New Testament books translated from Greek.

137 posted on 06/20/2012 8:42:24 AM PDT by Fiji Hill (Deo Vindice!)
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To: KevinB

Yes to all!


138 posted on 06/20/2012 8:42:52 AM PDT by CatherineofAragon (Time for a write-in campaign...Darryl Dixon for President)
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To: Constitutionalist Conservative

They are even worse at math and science. Consider this in light of the over-emphasis reading, English, history, civics put on the area of overall written and verbal communications and literacy in school.


139 posted on 06/20/2012 8:48:44 AM PDT by RinaseaofDs (Does beheading qualify as 'breaking my back', in the Jeffersonian sense of the expression?)
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To: Constitutionalist Conservative
Another mile marker on the highway of civilizational decline.

There are working to try "and" make things better!

140 posted on 06/20/2012 8:56:08 AM PDT by Right Wing Assault (Dick Obama is more inexperienced now than he was before he was elected.)
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