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Someone on FF.net tried to leave a review for my latest posted chapter, but all that came through was, "I". Either the sender hit "Send" too quickly in a case of premature anticipation, or it's a nifty new way to flip folks the bird over the Internet. I'm going to assume the former, alas, and consequently wonder what they intended to say.
Rumor has it that FF.Net has banished the semicolon from its lexicon of acceptable punctuation. Can anyone confirm this? When I uploaded my latest offering this afternoon, none of my semicolons had been abducted, but then again, I only did a perfunctory scan after the pre-upload proofreading. If there be a kernel of truth to the rumor, I'll stop posting there. I refuse to condone, tacitly or actively, the progressive and profound deterioration of written English. I will finish out my latest story as a courtesy to those who have chosen to read it, and then I will direct any interested parties to my GreatestJournal, which I'll use as a fic repository. That way, no anonymice get shafted, and I can protect my LJ from trolls, drama llamas, and shit-stirring grudgewankers. Much as I appreciate my anonymous readers, there are aspects of my life that I prefer to keep among familiar names.
The erosion of English grammar is appalling. The freshest crop of copy editors has clearly fallen victim to a substandard educational system more interested in favorable statistics than practicable education. Stories posted to the AP wire and Reuters, the two most prominent news wires in this country, are riddled with bad spelling, abominable grammar, and dubious syntax. Commas are either ignored altogether or littered throughout articles like grapeshot. They splice where they shouldn't and are lamentably absent when most needed. In the worst cases, there are tense shifts from sentence to sentence. It's enough to nauseate the hardiest of word tinkerers.
How has no one noticed the steep decline, and if they have noticed, why hasn't more been done? The written word is one of the most powerful and beautiful forms of communication, and it shouldn't be allowed to languish as it has done. Phonics and intensive grammar drills should be re-introduced into school curriculum on a national scale. It saddens me to think that fifty years hence, I won't recognize my own language, and I'm deeply embarrassed at the realization that my country calls such poorly-educated people its best and brightest. If that's so, I'd rather they turn out the lights, if you please.
I'm not saying that every published work should be perfect; that's improbable even for the most talented writers and journalists. I, do, however, think that a modicum of proficiency should be amply demonstrated before a person is accorded either title and allowed to publish under the auspices of a newspaper, magazine, or publishing house. They don't have to be Thoreau, per se, but Hemingway wouldn't be amiss. He kept it simple and correct because he knew what he was good at, and he never made a fool of himself as a writer. As a man is another matter entirely.
Unfortunately for the English language, one of the drawbacks to Internet egalitarianism is the inflated sense of ability it sometimes engenders in starry-eyed individuals who think that just because someone in cyberspace liked something they wrote, they've got the talent and the right to do it for a living. Couple this unfounded optimism with American society's reluctance to tell anyone they're not up to snuff, and it's no surprise that we've wound up with a nation of semi-literates.
Newsflash: The fact that you blog on the Internet doesn't necessarily translate into a talent for writing. Odds are, you don't have one. You can, however, become versed in proper grammar and intelligible writing if you're willing to work at it. Strunk and White's Elements of Style is your best friend. Memorize it. Worship the rules therein. Practice them, and only when they have become second nature can you can break them. But only sparingly, and never "just because".
Were I to become an American Empress, my first royal act would be to sever the keyboard cords of every computer in the country. Then, I'd deliver Strunk and White to every mailbox, along with instructions to provide a writing sample on a topic of choice. Only when an individual had proven basic literacy and writing skills would they keyboard be returned. Those wishing for careers in which written eloquence plays a major role-journalists, copy editors, writers, and lawyers-would be held to a higher standard. An annual proficiency test would be given to every child from kindergarten onward, and if they failed, they would be remanded to phonics and grammatical tutelage until they passed. I wouldn't care if they were thirty and still sitting in the little wooden chairs, their knees up to their noses.
Harsh, but it just might work, and if it did, I wouldn't have to parse my native language into a readable form every time I opened a website or a newspaper with real ink on the pages.
Rumor has it that FF.Net has banished the semicolon from its lexicon of acceptable punctuation. Can anyone confirm this? When I uploaded my latest offering this afternoon, none of my semicolons had been abducted, but then again, I only did a perfunctory scan after the pre-upload proofreading. If there be a kernel of truth to the rumor, I'll stop posting there. I refuse to condone, tacitly or actively, the progressive and profound deterioration of written English. I will finish out my latest story as a courtesy to those who have chosen to read it, and then I will direct any interested parties to my GreatestJournal, which I'll use as a fic repository. That way, no anonymice get shafted, and I can protect my LJ from trolls, drama llamas, and shit-stirring grudgewankers. Much as I appreciate my anonymous readers, there are aspects of my life that I prefer to keep among familiar names.
The erosion of English grammar is appalling. The freshest crop of copy editors has clearly fallen victim to a substandard educational system more interested in favorable statistics than practicable education. Stories posted to the AP wire and Reuters, the two most prominent news wires in this country, are riddled with bad spelling, abominable grammar, and dubious syntax. Commas are either ignored altogether or littered throughout articles like grapeshot. They splice where they shouldn't and are lamentably absent when most needed. In the worst cases, there are tense shifts from sentence to sentence. It's enough to nauseate the hardiest of word tinkerers.
How has no one noticed the steep decline, and if they have noticed, why hasn't more been done? The written word is one of the most powerful and beautiful forms of communication, and it shouldn't be allowed to languish as it has done. Phonics and intensive grammar drills should be re-introduced into school curriculum on a national scale. It saddens me to think that fifty years hence, I won't recognize my own language, and I'm deeply embarrassed at the realization that my country calls such poorly-educated people its best and brightest. If that's so, I'd rather they turn out the lights, if you please.
I'm not saying that every published work should be perfect; that's improbable even for the most talented writers and journalists. I, do, however, think that a modicum of proficiency should be amply demonstrated before a person is accorded either title and allowed to publish under the auspices of a newspaper, magazine, or publishing house. They don't have to be Thoreau, per se, but Hemingway wouldn't be amiss. He kept it simple and correct because he knew what he was good at, and he never made a fool of himself as a writer. As a man is another matter entirely.
Unfortunately for the English language, one of the drawbacks to Internet egalitarianism is the inflated sense of ability it sometimes engenders in starry-eyed individuals who think that just because someone in cyberspace liked something they wrote, they've got the talent and the right to do it for a living. Couple this unfounded optimism with American society's reluctance to tell anyone they're not up to snuff, and it's no surprise that we've wound up with a nation of semi-literates.
Newsflash: The fact that you blog on the Internet doesn't necessarily translate into a talent for writing. Odds are, you don't have one. You can, however, become versed in proper grammar and intelligible writing if you're willing to work at it. Strunk and White's Elements of Style is your best friend. Memorize it. Worship the rules therein. Practice them, and only when they have become second nature can you can break them. But only sparingly, and never "just because".
Were I to become an American Empress, my first royal act would be to sever the keyboard cords of every computer in the country. Then, I'd deliver Strunk and White to every mailbox, along with instructions to provide a writing sample on a topic of choice. Only when an individual had proven basic literacy and writing skills would they keyboard be returned. Those wishing for careers in which written eloquence plays a major role-journalists, copy editors, writers, and lawyers-would be held to a higher standard. An annual proficiency test would be given to every child from kindergarten onward, and if they failed, they would be remanded to phonics and grammatical tutelage until they passed. I wouldn't care if they were thirty and still sitting in the little wooden chairs, their knees up to their noses.
Harsh, but it just might work, and if it did, I wouldn't have to parse my native language into a readable form every time I opened a website or a newspaper with real ink on the pages.
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