Thursday, September 9, 2010

Spelling and Grammar

This was written on September 9th, 2010

So my friend asked me this question that she considers controversial yesterday, "Should technology ever be an excuse for poor grammar?" At first I was more concentrated on the fact that to me that's not even a controversial question as in my eyes there is only one answer. That is to say that there is never an excuse for bad grammar, not in writing at the very least. If you're having a conversation with someone and you say things wrong, well as long as you get the message across its fine, but in writing, you have as much time as you're willing to devote to make sure that everything is proper.

If you don't take the time to make sure everything is proper then obviously you don't care about what you're writing. Which naturally makes me wonder, "Why are you writing it if you don't care?" If you do care, then why won't you take the time? Why would you not make sure that there are absolutely no distractions from what you have to say by making sure that everything is spelled correctly, punctuated properly and written with grammatic accuracy. It doesn't make sense that you would slack on something you care about.

So for someone to ask me, "Is it okay if since I'm just texting on my phone, that I don't write everything with proper punctuation and spelling?" I'm just staring at the word texting and I forget about the rest of their sentence. How did this word come into existence, is it in any computer based dictionary, because personally when I write the word. It has a giant red squiggly line of death underneath it. One that breaks my focus and forces me to reconsider the intelligence of what I'm reading and writing.

My answer to this question, when not distracted is this, "Is it okay for me to burn the Koran just because I don't believe it is relative to me?" The answer is obviously no. Burning any text, let alone a religious text, is the highest form of blasphemy I can conceive. Yet you people choose to destroy text and language with your misuse and misunderstanding. Naturally by, "you people" I am referring to the entire world, including myself. We are all guilty of it, "lol" and "roflmao" or even "hahaha" when we're laughing in a text. How else are we supposed to explain our emotion, which can't be read in a message unless you have serious experience with reading and understanding language. Which most people don't have in this day and age.

So to your question, Rachelle, I will stick with my answer. However, I will also pose a question to you, "If I say that we all need to learn to better ourselves and our usage of language and its rules, regardless of technology. How is it that we incorporate the technology that makes it harder to communicate and give ourselves a way to communicate well without brutally murdering our own language(s)?"