October 6th, 2004
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The very first rant that I wrote for a website was back in 1997, and was a permanent and prominent fixture on my first website, hosted by Tripod. If you could wade through the popups and auto-generated crap that Tripod added to my site, you could eventually find my "Custer's Last Stand" -style rant about the demise of English on (and because of) the Internet.
Little did I know that the web pages of those days were literary masterpieces compared to the language one routinely finds on the Internet today. Even more respectable sites, e.g., the radio station I sometimes read the local news from, contain grammatical, punctuation, and logical errors in the text.
In 1997, I cited some examples in particular that I thought represented the worst in English language mistakes:
- its, it's ("it's" only and ever means, "it is" while "its" means "belongs to it" ... no exceptions)
- they're, their, there (just pick two and memorize them: "they're" is "they are" and "there" is a location--it's a simplification, but it works)
- lead, led (I irrationally blame Led Zeppelin for this one; "led" is the past tense of "lead." The noun "lead" is the stuff you should avoid in your drinking water)
- Overcompensation: e.g., "I've heard it's wrong to say, 'You and me went to the store,' so I'll always say, 'You and I.' Therefore, it must be okay to say, 'He gave the money to you and I.'"
- And about sentence fragments.
Here is my example of all of this in one paragraph:
There is their dog. I am sure that they're looking for it right now. Do you see how it's dragging its leash behind it? You and I should try to lead it out of that traffic. I wonder if something led it into the traffic in the first place. If we save their dog, they're likely to be happy with you and me.
Anyhow, I've lightened up some in the ensuing years about English that is not academic-level. There's a good reason for this: The computer industry employs a whole tonne of non-native English speakers. They aren't hired for their accuracy in producing English. If they can develop software and at least make themselves understood, then they satisfy the requirements.
This is probably best described by that worn-out cliché, "enlightened self-interest." As long as the computer industry contains bad spellers, people who make frequent grammatical errors (including the occasional really funny subject-verb mistakes), and people who can't remember the right word in certain situations and so create wordy long meaningless and difficult-to-read phrases, I am eminently employable.
(By the way: I can't take too much credit for this, really. My parents are both very well-spoken, and have always been--at least since I was born--and they never shied away from talking. My sisters and I grew up into a well-spoken family, and I didn't even realise it until years later when I encountered the Real World.)
I no longer worry too much about the disintegration of society because of the language commonly used in it. I've seen photographs from earlier times (pre-WWII) and often they show signs and billboards with big obvious spelling and punctuation errors. We've survived this long, and somehow been able to endure world wars, invent space travel, create anti-bacterial soap, and transitionally shift ourselves into the information age. So I've lightened up a bit about it: As long as we can still understand ourselves, it probably isn't a life-or-death issue. I plan to continue doing my best at creating well-written English, but I now realise it isn't the crushing crisis I once thought it was.
I know a lot of people who speak English as a second Language. I am friends with many, and even fell in love with someone who isn't a native English speaker (though I must point out that her English is much better than many native English speakers I know). Changed my mind very quickly, that. [SF -Ed.]
Wordiness is the legacy of clever-but-sub-gifted people everywhere. Ever heard George Carlin talk about this? I think it's very funny. He cites examples of excessive word use: "Shower activity" and "Rain events" as terms best described as "showers" and "rain." These are just wordy attempts at sounding official. To my ears they don't make the speaker sound more official or knowledgeable, just pretentious. On the other hand, I've intentionally used similar crap myself in meetings, just to see if anyone would notice (and to alleviate boredom) and nobody ever seems to care. I really honestly once said "architecting" and nobody even blinked, much less woke up.
Here's a memory from the American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS, or "A-Farts") in South Korea that I once heard: There was a Public Service Announcement (PSA) telling good soldiers everywhere to stop using confusing words, such as "vehicle," and instead use words that everyone knew, such as "Humvee."
Humm ....