Grammar can be a minefield.
Grammar is not just an educational issue. For some adults, it can sabotage friendships and even romantic relationships.
The research arm of dating site OKCupid looked at 500,000 first contacts and concluded that “netspeak, bad grammar and bad spelling are huge turn-offs”. The biggest passion killers were “ur”, “r”, “u”, “ya” and “cant”. Also damaging to online suitors were “luv” and “wat”.
On the other hand, correct use of apostrophes was appealing. Using “don’t” and “won’t” caused better than average response rates – 36% and 37% respectively, according to the research.
I can’t really argue with much of that. It really pisses me off to have someone use text speak when communicating with me – even by text. I make the effort to construct sentences that are correctly spelled when using text, so why not others? That way, at least, I don’t have to waste time trying to translate the gibberish into English.
That said…
It also satisfies the intellectual snob within us. Phelan wanted to find someone at ease with language.
I am not and never have sought perfection. Just make an effort to get it right. Don’t use leet speak, try to use punctuation accurately so that the sentence makes sense and please, please, please, get “there”, “their”, and “they’re” right. They mean different things even if they do sound the same. I don’t, however, get all uppity and point it out (no, not even your use of the Grocer’s apostrophe) – even if some smartarse comes on here and makes a snide comment about a missing comma in my prose. Yes, I deleted it – for two reasons; firstly, because I see no reason why I should provide a platform for snarky insults and intellectual snobs and secondly, it had no bearing on the discussion.
There is a third reason and I’ve deleted a few of these recently; the drive-by commenter who thinks they are being clever and have no intention of returning to respond to those who take the time to reply to their comments. They tend to be easy to spot – usually snarky and invariably off topic. Unless you plan to engage thoughtfully on the discussion in hand, returning to respond to your critics, please don’t bother.
Grammar is important! Capital letters are the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse, and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
I agree about textspeak, especially when used on forums. Initially I accepted it as a cost-saving measure in texts but as many of us now have contracts that give thousands of texts per month that economy is no longer needed.
Apostrophes indicating the genetive are very important but I am quite happy to see an evolution in English where dont, wont etc become words in their own right. The important thing is clarity of meaning in communication.
My favourite Grocer’s apostrophe, or should I say barman’s, appeared on a pub price list for the product Archers (sic) schnapps. On the list it read: Archer’y Schnapps.
Language is a fascinating subject and there are rules we should adhere to, although there will always be debate. That is part of the fun.
Your linked BBC Magazine article illustrates another aspect of this issue namely that the ‘in’ crowd, the BBC and language professionals, get to decide what is ‘right’ (i.e. what they write) and to delight in the ‘vibrancy’ of the ignorant and to deride those who try to meet the standard.
It is all part of their cultural relativism strategy for praising the bad as being ‘equally valid’ while denouncing anyone who aspires to do better. After all it gives them a career as they can observe variations in the language and it also allows them to create a new class of victim.
So the language of the poor white trash, built on native ignorance and copying imported dialect and in-group slang from their new black and brown majority classmates, is to be welcomed. This has the dual ‘benefit’ of parting what were standard English speakers from their own nation and being able to blame them for discriminating against job seekers and the like who use this new ‘vibrant’ English.
I used to think St. Winifred’s School Choir was singing about grammar until I saw the lyrics written down. (I don’t tend to remember spoken words. Written? No problem. This was something of a problem during my formal education.)
In my experience, there’s no excuse for the condensed “text-speak” today given modern mobile phones’ ability to predict what you’re going to type. On most systems, it’s so accurate that you have to go out of your way to use the “txt” form. Also, there was never any excuse for using it on forums and other communications media: SMS has a limited number of characters, but USENET and web forums certainly don’t. The additional bandwidth used is insignificant.
Language is a user interface: it’s our primary means of human-human interaction. If you’re going out of your way to make it harder for me to understand what you’re trying to say, I’m not going to bother listening to you. I don’t suffer fools at all, let alone gladly.
Many years ago, I made an acid comment within earshot of a colleague. She commented that I clearly didn’t suffer fools gladly. To which I replied, “what do you mean by gladly?”
No, I don’t bother reading text speak either.
I confess, I’ve never understood the reason for the “gladly” part of that phrase. I keep wanting to ask: “Which part of ‘Sapiens’ do you not understand?”
Having read the BBC article, I’m still at a loss over the ‘intellectual snob’ tag. Where does that come from? What’s wrong with writing and speaking clearly?
The only snobbery on display is the awful inverted snobbery castigating the correct usage of English.
The snobbery occurs when someone is being overly pedantic. A piece may be written clearly, but there is a missed comma, for example. The snobs are those who pick up on minor transgressions and make a mountain out of them.
Overly pedantic is a fault I agree. Yet snobbery is the wrong term. As you yourself pointed out in a previous post about standards; “If you are going to have standards, then you set them and people either achieve them or they do not” Where’s the snobbery in that?
English may be an evolving language, but without certain standards it becomes little more than modulated grunting.
It’s more to do with the “how”. Given that language is an evolving beast, the main point is clarity. So we need some rules. Other rules become archaic and fall into disuse. The pedant will nitpick over rules that are no longer in use or make a grammatical point where it is pretty obvious that the writer missed it in the proofreading – and will take delight in finding the fault because it proves the writer to be wrong. That’s the snobbery.