re: #141 lawhawk

For all the people complaining about speaking “proper” English, I think it’s actually far more troubling that people don’t know how to write properly. With texting and twitter, grammar and spelling is falling by the wayside, and that affects education at all levels.

Heck, at one job I worked on, we got resumes from supposed college and law school grads but their writing samples were absolutely dreadful. They contained all kinds of errors in grammar and spelling. It’s not going to get any better.

Grammar and spelling fell by the wayside long before texting and Twitter.

Back when I was editor-in-chief at a publishing company, a colleague taking part-time classes toward a degree asked me to proof a paper she had written.

It was probably unethical of me even to do it, but I did. When she got my corrections, she came back to me near tears. “Am I really that bad of a writer?” Well, actually, yes. I didn’t have to say it in so many words; the red marks spoke for themselves. Hell, she asked an editor to edit her work.

Later I asked her immediate superior about it, who told me that even in grad school these days, no professor or TA worries about spelling, grammar, syntax or general solecisms. Your grade depends merely on whether you sorta-kinda get the general idea across. In other words, as long as you spew back whatever PC garbage you were indoctrinated with, it’s all good.