A Littel Attention to Detail's

Okay enough about politics and seriousness, time for a rant. Why is it that people in this country don't feel the need to correctly speak, spell or punctuate? This is a rapidly declining standard that is aggravating beyond words. Perhaps it was that my Dad spoke the King (or Queen's) English, and insisted that I did as well, but this is sort of a matter of pride for me, since I still retain my British citizenship I need to be able to speak the language that the country spawned. Not saying I don't have my moments where I slip up in speach, but for heaven's sake people...

Let's make this a "top three, scratch that four" complaints. I hope not to offend anyone, but if I do, I apologize in advance. Here goes.

1 - Email - Since messages are generally short and less formal, there is an apparent supposition that it is not necessary to spell things correctly, punctuate, capitalize, or even string words together coherently, let alone spell people's names correctly. I had a regional director of marketing that consistently spelled a colleague's name "Brain" in stead of "Brian." Really? You make $100k a year and can't check to make sure you are spelling a co-worker's name correctly? I won't even talk about the numerous times we had to get out the urim and thumim to make sense of a weekly marketing update. I understand occasional mistakes, but every word processing program since the first Windows I used over 15 years ago has had a spelling check. CLICK IT! Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Comcast, all have spelling check, and if you use Outlook, it will even check your grammar, but that might be asking too much. Just start with spelling names and 90% of words correctly and I will be happier.

2- Now that you have mastered the spell check, let's take it to the next level. Let's talk about knowing what words mean. I know this is tough, but every cell phone sold now except the ones specifically marketed to kids and senior citizens has the internet or text messaging (Send a message to 46645 with "definition" and the word, and you will receive a message with the definition for free, just the cost of a regular text message). Use it to find out what words actually mean. A few favorites are "Ignorant" used as if it means generally a jerk, "Socialist" as a label applied to anyone who voted for a Democrat in any election since 1980 (Sorry, small political jab), "Their" used in place of "They're" or "There" or "Your" versus "You're"(We'll talk more about apostrophes in a moment), and last but not least, "All forms of 'to be' verbs." Is it really that hard to decide whether to use "was" or "were" when referring to what you and several friends did last night? I don't care if you live in Utah or West Virginia, you know in your heart whether it should be "We was" or "We were" and if you simply choose not to speak correctly, well you simply sound ignorant (Okay, that is my last one, and I'll stop using the word ignorant "for realz" now).

3 - Ebonics - I haven't heard this term in a while, but I haven't heard a suitable replacement, so we'll play this one where it lies. Why does every up-and-coming hip-hop icon wanna-be feel the need to brutalize the english language to the point of needing dental records in order to identify it. Now I am not a hip-hop hater, anyone who knows me well knows that my iPod has a decent selection of both old and new school hip hop. I love Snoop, Dre, Kanye, and "all themz," but do we really need to create new words, colloquial or not, to accomodate the declining education standards in the US? I don't think that with our Federal budget defecit and armed forces already stretched thin, we should be sending the message to other nations that we are raising a generation of complete idiots. It is like asking someone to attack us, because can you imagine trying to give missile command orders using this ridiculous excuse for communication? General Whitey; "Where are the missile launch codes?" Private Wigger; "Right thurr..." General Whitey; "Where?" Private Wigger; "Thurr!" General Whitey; "Private, we don't have time for this, could you be a little more specific? The Russians are launching as we speak!" Private Wigger; "Fo shizzle g-dizzle. Themz iz all up in the desk's biz-nass..." BOOM! I hope you see my point. Now I will confess, this is one that I do have a hard time with as I find it amusing, but the truth is much more disturbing - millions of people not only communicate this way, but believe it to be acceptable. This is not just a race issue, although there are racial undertones, the bottom line is that unless you own the Bentleys and Ferraris in your own music videos, your slang and prostituted English should stay in the songs and music videos that tend to give it breath.

4 - Plural forms of words, specifically apostrophes. This is my biggest pet peeve, and sadly, the most common that I have noticed lately. This may come as a shock to some of you (hopefully not) but adding "apostrophe s" to words does not make them plural, in fact it usually makes them wrong. Different words have different plural forms, but as far as I am aware, no word in the English language is made plural by adding an "apostrophe s," but in stead this makes most words possessive. This means that if my blog title were "The Kane's" that it would be singular and possessive, or "the blog belonging to one Kane," or give it the meaning "The Kane IS..." Totally different, and yet no one but me seems bothered by this. If I am incorrect or out of line, feel free to comment, or if you have a question, I would gladly refer you to a few sites, but in the name of all that is holy, STOP USING APOSTROPHEs TO MAKE THINGS PLURAL!!! Especially on websites, printed material, and emails.

If you don't know a word's (possessive, not words - plural) definition or the correct plural form, check Websters or Wikipedia, but unless you want to be called out by an angry British Expatriate (not necessarily me, unless you catch me on a bad day), called out by an English teacher, or maybe beaten to death with the dictionary or thesaurus that you perhaps ought not have considered so trivial or unimportant, take the extra seconds to care for the language - somebody has to.