People assured me that it was only “the MySpace crowd” or the teenage girls spouting off nonsense like “omg ur teh bst frd in wrdl!!11″. I believed them, telling myself that it’s just a phase that people will go through and grow out of. It’s just a series of shortcuts, right? They still know how to spell and properly construct sentences when they want to, right? When I see blatant spelling and grammar mistakes in professional publications and correspondence day after day, I see that those claims aren’t true at all. There have been numerous reports from school teachers complaining that their students spell “your” as “ur” in essays for class, among other ridiculous atrocities.
But today we’ve reached a new low, I think: Wired News published an article (screenshot just in case they actually find an editor) with a painful and obtrusive grammar error in the headline. I winced and subsequently wept inside at the degeneration of competence among the American population at large.
It’s absolutely absurd that any professional company would publish an article with such a glaring error in it, much less its headline. I am amazed, aghast, and saddened at the state of education in this country and the encouragement from popular culture toward carelessness and incompetence. It’s not OK to be incompetent! You still need to earn your money and get an education to make yourself useful in this world.
It’s not a free ride, nor a “do (or abstain from) whatever you damn well please” world. Rappers, professional sports players, and talentless music stars are anomalies in the system. The average person in life cannot expect to be successful or respected by just “doing [his or her] own thing” when that thing has no merit or value whatsoever. It may seem like a foreign and ridiculous concept, but you still must actually try if you are to succeed at surpassing the intellect and maturity of a fourteen year-old girl.
Haha, those fools. By the looks of those comments for the article, you weren’t the only person that was pissed off. You’re not alone; there’s hope for us yet.
Just absolutely ridiculous. I’ve always been shocked how far my Nobel M.S. english skills carried me. After I moved away from the valley, I’ve usually received top marks on writing assignments and papers having not really learned anything useful in H.S. or college. I was sure there were much more competent people out there until I got some very positive feedback from some Profs who used to teach in Ivy League schools. I’m sure there are people who are more competent than myself, such as Brad “H3H” Fults, but I’m starting to feel there’s not that much more…now that’s sad.
I appreciate the vinegar and passion in your post, Brad. While it’s true that the growing informality of most textual communication (as exemplified in the Instant Message) has wrought a general degradation in the quality of writing, I have a hope. Just as I found your blog tonight (and am very happy to have done so), I have faith that the medium will be as generous to the talented as she is tolerant of the mediocre. If quality matters to you and if it matters to me and if you and I can collaborate and if there is power in that collaboration, then there is hope. Keep up the good work.
2HousePlague
Happens every day. In the Enzo article last month or so mixed up pole and poll… I forget if they were talking about the poll the car ran into, or a recent pole of opinion, but it was wrong.
Whenever someones talking to me online, I usually revert to “Would it kill you to type like a real person?” As a result, even my gf’s little sister types in complete english to me, and she is in the ‘myspace phase’.
Its funny, even in business documents there are errors aplenty. The only place you are safe is in legal documents, because they get nullified if they contain errors. Of course, the amount of anal-retentiveness that goes into legal documents is what spawned legalese… a middle road is what we need.
Emphasis on middle… we’re in the drainage ditch at the moment…
oh, addendum:
The error wasn’t Wired’s, it was the Associated Press. That headline is directly off the news wire.
Doesnt make the situation any better (I’d argue worse)…
Yeah, AP is probably worse. Agreed though: everything in moderation!
Approaching world peace, one typo at a time.
I think you phrased your argument incorrectly. Grammatical mistakes and high school dropouts cannot be easily associated with “doing your own thing” because “doing your own thing” is how people become successful. Not “doing your own thing” is what results in the mediocrity and incompetence you’ve just pointed out. Contemporary society is the embodiment of laziness.
Yeah, I was too lax with the sense of “doing your own thing”, in which I only meant to point out the negative types of things, not the creative successes.
Look how much attention the mistake gets. It eclipses the content of the article. I wrote about that in one of my own posts. Mistakes are distracting and they take the reader’s attention away from whatever the writer is saying.
You’ve written a good piece here. Thanks.