What difference does it make?
More then you think.
Been a lot of back and forth in recent times about the correct use, or lack, as the case may be, of grammar.
And/or punctuation.
But that's a other topic for an different time.
Judging from some of the pushback on social media, a lot of people take exception to having it pointed out to them that they are guilty of incorrect usage.
The cutesy (and meant to be denigrating) term "Grammar Police" popped up pretty quickly as if those who were inclined to not use correctly were ready to compare those who pointed out said incorrect usage to some Orwellian Big Brother bunch, storm trooping through the streets, torches ablaze, a copy of Mein Kampf under one arm and the Oxford Dictionary under the other, ready to kick your door down and drag you away into the night to some dark, damp dungeon.
Or a seat, front and center, in the closest university level English course.
(They'll probably want to take your guns away from you, two, but that's to be expected from some wild eyed group who thinks it matters a hoot in hell that your not crazy about the fact they don't do things you're way..)
Those who are perfectly okay with there use of there in place of their seem to be pretty sensitive to any enlightenment shined in their direction.
They can't be faulted. After all, nobody likes to have their ignorance pointed out to them.
Sheldon's wise mama Mary explained it best.
"Shelly, I've been telling you since you were five years old that it's okay to be smarter than everybody, you just can't go around telling them."
"Well, why not?"
"Because they don't like it."
Jokes, and irrational, satirical fears of being imprisoned for a spell for failure to spell, aside, the refusal, or inability, of so many to use correct grammar, punctuation, et al, is so much more than just an intellectual burr put under the saddle of those less sophisticated.
But, let's be fair here.
There was a time in this nation's history when "ignorance" did not necessarily equate to a lack of intelligence.
Our first settlers and those who lived in rural areas, those who did not have access to organized schools and good old fashioned book learnin' were probably atrocious spellers, folks who wouldn't know an apostrophe from an antelope, a participle from a plow.
But that didn't prevent those who possessed wisdom from expressing it, those who were savvy from sharing it, those who were, simply, smart from passing it on from elders to youngers in a perpetual circle of the life educational.
That said, we simply do not live that life anymore.
Education, knowledge, information that wasn't available at all to those who plowed those fields and built those houses and essentially laid the foundation for the country as it exists today is now not only available through long established fine institutions of higher learning.....
...it's available to every and all, at any time, with no more than the click of a button, or mouse as it were, on the very screen where you are reading the words I am typing.
Or the phone that you will almost certainly check at least once before you finishing reading what I have typed.
And while that aforementioned inability, or refusal, to use proper grammar, correct punctuation, etc. is not a disease, it most certainly is a symptom.
Of the more malignant malady.
ADD.
American Dumb Down.
Spreading like a virus from sea to shining sea, already permeating the culture, our television programming, our movie production, even our popular music.
Rampant and feverish in our political parties and governing bodies.
Each and every day, the energy put into raising our bars higher is replaced by the "anti-energy", a minimum amount of effort resulting in a maximum output of apathy, indifference, casual, even sloppy, attention to quality and/or detail.
A growing population of citizens less inclined to put shoulders to the wheel of progress and advancement than to use said shoulders for nothing more than a lah-dee-dah shrug and a "whatever" when it comes to more traditional values and not only a willingness to settle for less than best, but an almost automatic deference to whatever requires less energy, commitment, devotion, effort.
Not just acting fat and lazy.
But actually becoming more fat and more lazy.
"For want of a nail", the classic tale begins.
Or want of the correct use of a single word.
What difference does it make?
All the difference in the world.
Because knowledge is power.
And power drives the engine.
The engine essential to us ever again getting anywhere.
Unless, of course, your one of those people who could care less.
No comments:
Post a Comment