Having maintained my fair share of websites over the years, I’ve had the privilege of communicating with some of the finest citizens of the Internet about a great many topics. Although we exchange our thoughts entirely in written words, I’ve found that it is a rare correspondent indeed who feels compelled (or even inclined) to make use of the rules of the English language.
On occasion, I have received emails that are so carelessly dashed off that I can literally make no sense of them. Sentences neither begin nor end, but rather run along into one another in a confusing and unpunctuated stream of what I can only assume is consciousness. Words are misspelled or misused (or omitted completely). I dare not even venture to broach the subject of capitalization, as it is a well-known fact that the pinkies of most users of the Internet cannot be bothered to depress the shift key with any regularity.
When this particular page was first posted, I displayed a few of the most exuberantly malformed emails I had received, regardless of what topic they addressed. Since that time, I am happy to say that I have received quite enough exclusively on the subject of language and its usage to do away with all of those off-topic messages. I doubt I need to explain what I intend to accomplish in what follows below — it is simply presented for your enjoyment and possible edification. I would certainly encourage anybody out there to write to me with any opinions or comments that you have. Be forewarned, however, that anything you say or write could end up posted on this page.
hey
whats up with making fun of people who dont always type good in email???? its
okay if you want to write like that but nobody else has to just becaue you do
to... are you some sort of english teacher or something??? i could make fun of
you to on my webpage about what you write how then you could see how it
feels!!!
This, I
imagine, represents some sort of appeal to my conscience. I would admire the tactic — attempting to
inspire my compunction by inviting me to put myself in the victims’ shoes — if,
that is, it weren’t so ridiculously trite.
My greatest fear is that this particular correspondent believed that she
had indeed discovered a new and exciting argument that I had not previously
considered. To put all questions to rest once and for all, I have of course
considered what it would feel like to have examples of my own poor grammar laid
bare for the entire world to see. (They
do exist — briefly, that is, until I destroy them jealously.) It would be embarrassing, to say the least. Some might say that it might be so
embarrassing that I would stop doing it.
But, I digress.
The
beauty of this message is that the first line encompasses an especially wicked
turn that adjusts a seemingly innocuous greeting into a lurking criticism. After all, the first three words (“hey whats
up”) certainly conform to the general rules of Internet greetings. (True, indeed — I shouldn’t properly refer
to “whats” as a word, but I strive for efficiency here. Forgive my shortcut.) The lack of punctuation make it unclear
whether those words comprise a complete thought, and it is only by reading
further that one learns they do not. By
then, it is too late and the treacherous stiletto has already slipped unnoticed
into the flesh, clothed in the garb of a salutation. Anon, the cruel knife is twisted.
I’ll
pass over the missing apostrophes and stunted capitals without any further
comment, simply because (or should I say “becaue”?) there is little more to say
about them. What really fascinates me
about the piece is the reasonably consistent triplicate formation of the punctuation
— except, of course, the extravagant opening salvo of four question marks. I imagine they are intended to show emphasis
— a half-breed trick borrowed from cheap cartoonists. I can understand this in
the case of the exclamation and question marks (though I hardly approve) but
what disturbs me most is that the ellipses seem to have been enlisted into a
similar cause. H.G. Wells must be
spinning in his grave like a rotisserie chicken.
And,
finally, I am not in fact “some sort of english teacher or something.” I am an English major, though I can hardly
claim to judge whether that counts as “something” or not. I seriously considered not even answering
this question on the grounds that its sense of urgency had been distilled
almost to nothing. Besides being
boringly redundant, “some sort” and “or something” are both terms of
equivocation. Their dual invocation
indicated to me that the interrogator was less interested in a real answer than
in hearing herself type as many words as possible.
Ha.You
think your so smart but your really just dumb like the rest of us. you think
you’re better than everybody because you think you write better.But you write
“your grammar wears army boots” when grammar isn’t a person and doesn’t have
feet so how can it wear army boots i ask you that!!!!! Grammers just
words!!Your just as dumb as the rest of us so you are really just making fun fo
yourself!!!
No, sir, I’m afraid I am most emphatically not making fun of myself. I prefer to see myself as a gentle pressure on the backsides of folks like yourself — a pressure that applies itself at the appearance of driveling and insulting constructions like that which I have duplicated above. Whether you prefer to perceive that pressure as the guiding hand of a loving mentor or the barbed lash of a merciless critic is entirely your prerogative.
What is not your prerogative, however, is the amount of spacing that follows a full stop at the end of a sentence. As long as you are terminating a complete thought, the language strenuously insists that you follow the punctuation with two complete spaces before beginning your next sentence. I know that current trends sometimes make this matter confusing — print publications like newspapers and books often leave out one of the spaces between sentences — but your confusion notwithstanding, the rules remain the same. (Incidentally, books and newspapers leave out the second space partly because it saves paper when the omission is repeated hundreds of thousands of times, and partly because their justification processes tend to vary the width of spaces anyway. Neither of these reasons, I might point out, in any way applies to email messages.)
I suppose I’ll also have to face head-on your apparent (and possibly willful?) inability to read my use of the word “grammar” as anything but literal. There are a number of fancy Greek terms of varying appropriateness that partially explain what I was attempting to accomplish with that phrase — but they all more or less describe what is often parochially called a “pun.”
By the way, grammar is not “just words” — indeed it’s misleading to refer to grammar as words at all. Grammar is more accurately a paradigm of arranging words into a logical fashion so that your reader (or listener) can more easily understand your meaning. The system defines certain parameters inside of which expression has free play, and — if I may anticipate an argument — those rules certainly are not arbitrary. Every language has a different paradigm based on its special needs.
Latin, for instance, does not emphasize grammar so strenuously as English for the reason that conjugation does much of the work itself. Because the suffixes of Latin words so clearly explains how they are being used, it is not nearly as important to put everything in the proper order. In German, on the other hand, it is perfectly acceptable (and often fashionable) to concatenate ridiculously — constructing more complex words out of simpler ones. The precise German vocabulary allows such deceptively simple noun-on-noun constructions (think Schadenfreude) to be valid ways of explaining complicated thoughts.
In English, on the other hand, we put things in the proper order. That’s your only choice.
I
ran this thru the grammar checker on Microsoft Word, so you can’t say that I
don’t’ know grammar! But you need to
get a life and stop complaining about how everybody writes because nobody else
cares except for you!
My friend, it is precisely because you ran your text through the
grammar checker in Microsoft Word that I claim you don’t know anything about
the brave science we are discussing.
Any self-respecting student of grammar would scorn to use any system
that chooses to recognize Noah Webster’s bastard spelling of “through” as
legitimate expression. I shudder.
I would salute your use of capitals and spacing between
sentences, but I am not really in the habit of praising people for doing what
they’re supposed to do anyway. I would
like to point out that you have an extra apostrophe up in the neighborhood of
“don’t” — something that Word doesn’t catch because it thinks you’re ending a
quotation.
Meanwhile, the ugly head of pointless redundancy rears once
more. By explaining that “nobody else
cares except for [me],” you twice indicate that I am alone in my interest. Both the word “else” and the phrase “except
for” have exactly the same meaning in this sentence — and, indeed, including
both makes it clunky, unwieldy, and inelegant.
Perhaps next time you shouldn’t stop at the grammar checker — try using
the AutoSummarize option as well.
do
u really think ur the only person who knows how 2 write good grammar? alot of
ppl write the way they do online cuz its easier and quicker. its like shorthand
4 typing. ppl arent stupid-they jsut choose 2 write this way cuz its better.
So we’re going to seek refuge in aphaersis, apocope, syncope,
and lazy synaloepha, are we? You also
seem to be invoking some other figurative devices whose terms I don’t have
immediately at my disposal — I’m having difficulty, for instance, finding a
proper term for the act of replacing a word with a number. Everything the Greeks seem to have done
deals with replacing parts of speech with other parts of speech.
Naturally, I imagine that most of my correspondents who compose
such poorly designed messages do indeed know the proper rules of
expression. Rather than serving as a
mitigating factor, however, that is undoubtedly an aggravation of the
offense. Invincible ignorance is an
unassailable defense in the short run, but willful disregard is never worth two
beans. Doing something wrongly because
it can be done more quickly and easily is still wrong.
I’m not even sure exactly what the hurry is, anyway. Email is already an instantaneous form of
communication — are these messages so crucial that they need to be sent out a
minute sooner? Any recipient, I am
sure, would rather wait a few moments longer for a properly written and edited
message. Then, at least they would know
what it’s supposed to be about.
As mentioned above, I’m willing to receive any sort of mail on this topic. You are certainly welcome to write and inform me that I’m wrong — however, bear in mind that the history of the language stands ready to defend my side. I will have no compunction about invoking that sturdy defender to beat back any erroneous messages with extreme prejudice.
Fire away at [email protected].