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 ...
Several years ago, I read an article by Lord Conesford, a British writer, entitled "You Americans are Murdering the Language" which was published in Saturday Review of Literature in 1957. One of his beefs about American English was our use of "hospitalize"--he asked whether a patient who left the hospital to go home was "homized."
He also objected to the verbs "to package" and "to pre-package" and asked why we didn't simply use the verb "to pack" to describe the process of wrapping things up and putting them into packages. I figure that whatever his profession, the right and honorable Lord was not a librarian, or else he would have realized that "to package" and "to pre-package" are narrower terms which aid in the storage and retrieval of information.
Those are all pretty egregious. There was an antique store down n First Street in Snohomish, Washington that advertised on a hand-painted sign for years that they carried “Jewery”. I alwsys thought it meant jewelry, but maybe not since they never changed it.
They had a big orange cat that sat in a chair in the front window. You couldn’t buy the chair.
Your problem is that you're a relativist -- probably a lazy one. You deny the reality of barbarism, which can only mean that you deny the reality of civilization. There is no privileged point of view in your world; things just exist. Do you hold this out of principle (which I doubt), or as an unexamined sentiment? How do you square this with metaphysical questions touching on morality or epistemology? You seem to set a lot of store by utility -- are you utilitarian out of principle, or again, out of lazy sentiment?
I am thankful for spell check! :D
This may be the first time in history in which language evolution has been driven by underage children. It's more revolution (or coup, perhaps) than evolution. Time will tell if the changes are benign or malignant.
≤}B^)
Correct usage would, of course, lose the plural:
"Less voter turned out for the election."
Assuming that the reporter regards the voting public as an undifferentiated mass of jellied protoplasm.
From an old Firesign Theatre record:
(Three successive voices, from the crowd:)
“Hear, hear!”
“Where, where?”
“There, there!”
This may merely be a case of ignorance, not stupidity per say.
>> “This is all egotism.” <<
.
No, it’s something you wouldn’t understand: communication.
It’s OK to not like snobs, they did it to themselves.
We’re all getting older, my friend. When I joined here, my daughter was a year old, she will be 14 in less than 2 weeks and starts high school in September.
I am also thankful for spell check!
They aren’t subgroups they are the majority, and they’re communicating just fine. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean anything. There are standards in all languages that have been largely ignored by the masses for as long as there have been standards. It’s how things work. You aren’t defending anything, you’re just being snooty. No amount of anything from you is going to change the fact that the majority don’t give a crap about the grammar rules, they didn’t care about the rules before they were written down, they don’t care about them now, they’re not going to care about them any time soon. Most folks live with only 1 grammar rule “be understood”, which in the end is the point of all language.
I don’t deny the reality of barbarism, I deny that “between you and I” is barbaric. Saddam Hussein was barbaric, using words in a way the elite don’t like but still gets the point across fine is just talking.
Who said there’s no privileged point of view in my world? That’s you making crap up off the top of your head. Meanwhile out here in reality I’m just pointing out that “proper” grammar never has been used by the masses and anybody thinking it’s a new development is extremely short on facts.
Utility matters. If your activity has no effect why do it. Really most of this grammar “defending” is just ego stroking. That serves no purpose, and violates most principles.
How about your need to throw insults constantly? Does that come from your morality? Or is it just because you know the facts aren’t on your side so you go with bluster and rudeness instead?
Nope. The language is evolving now from the same people that have always caused it to evolve: the regular folks that aren’t creating formal communication. It’s all Pygmalion, always has been, always will be.
I understand communication just fine. Like I understand what you unintentionally communicated in your need to be insulting. You have no facts, just bluster.
I give up on you. You obviously think that communicating in backward grammar and spelling is OK. Well, fine, but when the individuals that you support go to get a job they should not be surprised to learn that others subscribe to rules and they may not get that job, and if they do, they may not hold it.
I can’t help but notice, though, that you write in the “King’s English.” I think that that makes you a bit of a hypocrite.
It is a stupid rule to which noöne with discernment pays heed.
And Fowler, Gowers, the OED, and the Bible support me on this.
I think communication is about communication and if the other side understand what you said without having to stop and decipher it you accomplished the goal. Now sometimes yes one should whip out the proper grammar, you don’t talk on your resume like you talk about sports at the water cooler after they hire you.
I write in a way that’s natural to me, I learned all the grammar rules and they structure my language thought. Most of the time. Some of them not so much. Like that sentence. I do use lots of contractions and slang though, more slang when talking than writing. But again it’s about audience, the less the audience is known to me the more “proper” I get, in a crowd that’s all friends things loosen up, and the profanity shows up. There’s nothing hypocritical about using mostly proper grammar while defending not proper grammar. I’m not saying people shouldn’t use proper grammar, I’m pointing out that most of the time proper grammar ain’t that exciting and most of the violations people whine about are not worth the energy people devote to it.
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