Grammar is your friend
We all have our things that bother us, right?
In an irritating society there are many irritating habits that make your skin crawl and patience disappear. People chewing with their mouths open, snorting, sniffing, coughing, talking … I can go on and on. It just depends on your tolerance level.
But there is something lately that grinds me even more than all those body noises.
Bad grammar.
Maybe it’s because I’m a writer / proofreader / editor that grinds me a bit more than you. But I can’t help but wonder what happened to teaching correct grammar: spelling and speaking.
With self-correcting and word anticipation on every computer on the planet, you’d think the correct words would appear. But even autocorrect can’t help with the wrong choice of words.
Grammar is not rocket science. It is common sense. Something that many people lack.
It is one thing if you type the wrong word. In my rush to write something, at work and at home, I chose the wrong form / spelling / tense. I almost always realize my mistakes when correcting. But I have come across some people, professional people, who constantly misspell, misrepresent, and actually spoil the English language. And often it is senior managers, people with studies and degrees, who should know more.
I know I sound like an old woman, but at least I am a grammatically correct old woman. They are not teaching cursive in schools these days, but speaking and writing well is as important as ever. I hear a lot of lazy English these days: modern language, slurred consonants, half words. In some circles that can mean money: a recording career, a stand-up comedy. But outside of that rarefied atmosphere, it won’t get you very far. You need to know how to spell it. You need to know your syntax.
Even if you don’t know what the syntax means.
I know that English is one of the most confusing languages out there. I mean, how many ways can you spell where? Wear? Commodity? But in today’s world that is not an excuse. When I see a professional letter that begins with “Good morning”, I have problems. It’s one thing to text “you’re my chest friend” instead of “you’re my best friend,” but not in an inter-office memo.
Not everyone is a scholar of writing. I know I am not. But I have practiced. I have learned. You owe it to yourself to take your time and reread what you write. Don’t count on the spell checker to catch your mistakes. Once you know your weaknesses, try eagerly NOT TO DO IT AGAIN. Don’t let lazy English stand in your way forward in your life.
After all, not everyone is Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy. Not everyone is cute and furry and can get away with saying, “Well, he can’t speak well like you and me, so his vocabulism is limited to ‘me’ and ‘am’ and ‘Groot’ exclusively in that order. . “