Stop speaking in tongues!

This is Greg J. here. I created this blog as a supplement to my website's news page; this being a place where I can lean a little more on personal rants instead of things actually relevant to said website (http://www.limegreennetwork.com/, if anyone's wondering). I shall begin this process with a rant on one of my greatest pet peeves…

Grammar! Anyone on LGN can tell you, I'm a total grammar nazi. And of course, spelling is also an issue. Now, if you really don't know how to write very well, and you don't understand grammar entirely, that's one thing. I still say it's not too hard to get a clue, but I'll give you a little sympathy there. You know what REALLY gets me, though? The people who do it on purpose - in other words, the abomination that is AOL Shorthand.

Now, I’ve heard all the justifications for AOL Shorthand – “it’s easier,” “I need to be able to send messages quickly,” and of course “everyone else does it now anyway.” Only one of these excuses has any validity, and that one only in certain situations. I concede that sending messages quickly CAN be a priority over appearance in online gaming, where being “typekilled” is a constant danger which increases with the length of your sentence. So it’s semi-acceptable to me to see Shorthand language used in such situations. However, any of the other justifications for its use, in any other situation, will not fly with me. Let’s face it, people: we’ve gotten lazy.

When you’re chatting online, sending a text message, or sending an e-mail – ESPECIALLY that latter – there is NO good excuse for saying “o” instead of “oh,” “u” instead of “you,” “r” instead of “are,” “b” instead of “be,” and “2” instead of “to” or “too.” I mean, wow. At most it saves you a whole TWO keystrokes! Good thing you didn’t have to hit those two keys, or you could lose your fingers! Or just look intelligent. I’M NEVER SURE WHICH.

Seriously, people. To anyone who’s not a brain-dead e-baby, typing like that makes you look like a complete, unrespectable idiot. You could be revealing the meaning of life, but if it starts with “ur about 2 b enlightened, lol” not too many people will listen. It’s just sheer laziness, and it’s laziness that happens to be lowering the collective intelligence quotient of the planet. If it’s not worth taking the extra nanoseconds to type out properly, it’s not worth saying at all.

Oh, and grammar. God, the poor apostrophe… Never has a punctuation mark been so needlessly and cruelly abused. I’ll do everyone reading this a favor and give you a quick lesson on the correct use of the apostrophe:

- If it’s being used to indicate possession, it belongs either before the “s” added to the end of the word (“George’s house”), or, if the word being modified already ends in an “s,” the apostrophe belongs AFTER it (“Chris’ house”).

- If it’s being used in a contraction (“it is” to “it’s,” for instance), you will have to learn where it belongs on a case-by-case basis (“you are” to “you’re,” but not “your!”)

- If it’s being used within a quotation (“so I said, ‘no, you do it,' and then he ran off”), the apostrophe is used in place of a quotation mark around the quoted phrase within the quote.

In NO OTHER SITUATION is the use of an apostrophe acceptable! One of the things that used to drive me nuts (until I finally just ripped it down last week) was a sign on a club bulletin board at my college posted over a list of club members reading “our officer’s.” Unless there was more to that sentence (“our officer’s duck collection”), that apostrophe did not belong, and the correct wording would have simply been “our officers,” sans apostrophe. Unfortunately, mistakes of the exact same nature are made constantly. Another popular victim is “it’s” and “its.” Despite the rule on apostrophes and possession that I previously cited, when you’re saying that something belongs to “it,” the correct spelling is “its.” Although it might not look like it, “it’s” is actually a contraction of “it is,” and should not be used otherwise. A lot of contractions get that, actually – “you’re” (contraction of “you are”) and “your” (“your house”) get confused all the time.

Another grammar mistake seen all too often, which drives me up the bleeding wall, is when People Capitalize The First Letter Of Every Word In A Sentence, or Else use first Letter capitalization seemingly at Random. Sweet Zombie Jesus, people... Here's when you capitalize the first letter of a word: when it's someone or something's name or title (as in "Sweet Zombie Jesus"), and when it's the first word at the start of a sentence. THAT'S IT! NEVER ANY OTHER TIME!

"A lot" is the common victim of Frankensteinification by being combined into a single, unnatural word - "alot." Guess what? "Alot" is not a word. As my first English professor at college, the great B.J. Ward, put it rather brilliantly: "it's rather like going up to your mother and asking if you can please have 'acookie.' Not quite correct." And speaking of things Ward would like you to know, "OK" and "okay" are both acceptable spellings of the word, but uncapitalizing the acronym version ("ok"), actually creates a bastard word that one would pronounce using a hard, German-esque "ach" sound.

And of course, there’s always the simple misspelling of words. Now, to your credit, some of the spelling rules we’re taught when we’re younger are lies. “I before E except after C?” More like “I before E except when it’s not.” Tons of words break the “I before E” rule – “weird,” for instance. However, there are other words people get wrong all the time that I simply can’t understand. Some of them, like “teh,” are just typos; the result of hasty typing. Others come about when people are typing words they’ve only heard but not seen, such as “walla” instead of “voila.” Some misspellings, however… just boggle the mind. Look, people… if you know you’re not good at spelling, just… just use a spell check, okay? Please? It’s not that hard. And it’s good for my brain.

So yeah. I think I’d better wrap this up now before I go on too much longer. I’ll post again with another rant soon enough. Hope you all learned something here today.