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 ...
The real culprit is the publik skool system where self esteem, political correctness and liberal brainwashing is more important than teaching grammar.
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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.
Magna cum fraude you mean.
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.
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.
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.
...irregardless of whether the young employees had been properly orientated...
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Your right. They could of learned alot more if they would of studied there English good.
"Is your mother home?"
"No, she ain't here."
"Watch your grammar."
"She ain't here, neither."
You’re a reverse snob.
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.
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.
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.
“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?
“Well, I mean...”
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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”.
He’s also terrible with noun and verb agreement.
And did you see Michelle’s senior thesis at Princeton?
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.
Yes to all!
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.
There are working to try "and" make things better!
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