Is English, as we know it, dead?
Yes, according to Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten.
"The end came quietly when a reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the youngest daughter of the president and first lady rather than the younger daughter. The letter writer called the first couple the 'Obama's.' This constituted an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy ..." and, Weingarten concluded, "English, already severely weakened, died of shame."
Not so fast, Mr. Weingarten. Maybe the patient can be revived. Who cares, except maybe a few newspaper columnists, former teachers of grammar, and those few copy editors who are still employed? Others may have some lingering memories of the differences between contractions and plurals, agreement of subject and verb, misplaced modifiers, dangling participles, and even, ugh, a teacher who insisted on diagramming sentences and perhaps something called "parsing." Those teachers red-penciled every spelling, punctuation, and usage error when it was quite clear what you meant. Who needs that?
Some probably thought "spell check" would save English. It might have saved Sarah Palin some backtracking had she checked "refudiate" and been able to choose "repudiate" or "refuse" or George W. Bush with "fundamentaries" or "educationalizing."
A different type of error occurred when spell check failed to stop a newsletter of mine stating a publication was not available when it should have stated it was now available.
Spell check allows some amusing errors. Who would want to spoil the fun of discovering "spade" female cats are for sale or that men now have a choice of treatments for "prostrate" cancer?
Newspapers have had to cut back on expenses for copy editors, but one would think Oprah could afford the best. Yet, consider this sentence from one of her news releases: "The audience was made up of some of who the programs called its most loyal viewers." A copy editor might change "who" to "whom" but would probably reword the sentence to read: "The audience was made up of some of the program's most loyal viewers."
There is another poorly written sentence in Dr. Phil's column in the November 2010 Oprah magazine: "Explain to your mother that you will continue to provide the highest-quality care you can afford her with." Rewritten, this would be "Explain to your mother that you will continue to provide her with the highest quality care you can afford."
The Oprah examples are not only ungrammatical, they stop the flow of the passage, forcing the reader to pause and think, "How was that again?"
Some more errors someone someplace should have corrected:
"The fact of the matter is..." (White House spokesman), a redundancy similar to Judge Judy's pet peeve, "Basically."
"For Michele and I..." (President Obama), a compound object of the preposition; thus, "for Michele and for me."
"Two pair of eyeglasses" (Vision World), pair is singular; "one pair, two pairs."
"Lots of tension between Simon and I" (Ellen DeGeneres), compound object of preposition; thus, "between Simon and me."
Those of us who bemoan grammatical errors and awkward sentences may not save English, but maybe another group will: employers.
An employer might overlook or not recognize some of the fine points of grammar that annoy columnists and teachers, but why take that chance?
Barbara Gunn is an Oak Ridge resident and frequent columnist.
Yes, according to Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten.
"The end came quietly when a reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the youngest daughter of the president and first lady rather than the younger daughter. The letter writer called the first couple the 'Obama's.' This constituted an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy ..." and, Weingarten concluded, "English, already severely weakened, died of shame."
Not so fast, Mr. Weingarten. Maybe the patient can be revived. Who cares, except maybe a few newspaper columnists, former teachers of grammar, and those few copy editors who are still employed? Others may have some lingering memories of the differences between contractions and plurals, agreement of subject and verb, misplaced modifiers, dangling participles, and even, ugh, a teacher who insisted on diagramming sentences and perhaps something called "parsing." Those teachers red-penciled every spelling, punctuation, and usage error when it was quite clear what you meant. Who needs that?
Some probably thought "spell check" would save English. It might have saved Sarah Palin some backtracking had she checked "refudiate" and been able to choose "repudiate" or "refuse" or George W. Bush with "fundamentaries" or "educationalizing."
A different type of error occurred when spell check failed to stop a newsletter of mine stating a publication was not available when it should have stated it was now available.
Spell check allows some amusing errors. Who would want to spoil the fun of discovering "spade" female cats are for sale or that men now have a choice of treatments for "prostrate" cancer?
Newspapers have had to cut back on expenses for copy editors, but one would think Oprah could afford the best. Yet, consider this sentence from one of her news releases: "The audience was made up of some of who the programs called its most loyal viewers." A copy editor might change "who" to "whom" but would probably reword the sentence to read: "The audience was made up of some of the program's most loyal viewers."
There is another poorly written sentence in Dr. Phil's column in the November 2010 Oprah magazine: "Explain to your mother that you will continue to provide the highest-quality care you can afford her with." Rewritten, this would be "Explain to your mother that you will continue to provide her with the highest quality care you can afford."
The Oprah examples are not only ungrammatical, they stop the flow of the passage, forcing the reader to pause and think, "How was that again?"
Some more errors someone someplace should have corrected:
"The fact of the matter is..." (White House spokesman), a redundancy similar to Judge Judy's pet peeve, "Basically."
"For Michele and I..." (President Obama), a compound object of the preposition; thus, "for Michele and for me."
"Two pair of eyeglasses" (Vision World), pair is singular; "one pair, two pairs."
"Lots of tension between Simon and I" (Ellen DeGeneres), compound object of preposition; thus, "between Simon and me."
Those of us who bemoan grammatical errors and awkward sentences may not save English, but maybe another group will: employers.
An employer might overlook or not recognize some of the fine points of grammar that annoy columnists and teachers, but why take that chance?
Barbara Gunn is an Oak Ridge resident and frequent columnist.
Source: http://www.oakridger.com/columnists/x898078904/Can-English-be-resuscitated
No comments:
Post a Comment