Increase Website Traffic

Archive for the ‘Article Writing’ Category

Has the english-speaking world lost its way along the `grammar track?’ Is the need for speed and brevity so critical that we are happy to see our beautiful language pummeled and beaten into something only vaguely resembling its former self? 

A new shorthand has emerged, dispensing with comma’s, full-stops, and anything previous generations have defined as grammatically correct and essential to meaning.

Punk grammar has taken over! Time is the thing; now the work-stressed, over-pressured, income earner who is used to slower, clearer, lengthier forms of communication, must learn to keep up; learn this new language and adopt a culture that is fast over-taking the older tried and true.

Fortunately there are still those who love the english language as it stands.

The 21st century is heralding many changes, large and small, across all spectrums. Two of the tiniest examples occur in the field of today’s rapid-fire communication, where getting a message across with speed and brevity has become paramount to accuracy of spelling and grammar. Grammatical perfection has had its day – at least in the quarters where instant communication is all. It’s not simply that our up and coming professionals, top executives, business owners and entrepreneurs, cannot spell – although surveys have shown that this is in fact already a problem – it’s more the fact of a competitive world becoming even more competitive. They need to make their point NOW. Not in two minutes or five but, right here, right now.

Speed of Communication

The age of texting and emailing is here to stay, at least until the next big thing in communication comes along. In the meantime, electronic messaging has proved liberating to some of the older school, removing the ancient burden of grammatical correctness.

The comma, for instance, has lost its mythical aura and the full stop has become a pointless dot. Unhappily, for those who love the form and rhythm of perfect grammar, the world seems to have  gone mad; the beauty and poetry of language, developed over thousands of years, is at risk of becoming extinct while, from its ashes, rises a phoenix of ghastly proportions and a horrifying lack of finesse.

The Humble Vowel

Using the aforementioned shorthand, a communicator can say what they need, and be easily understood, using a limited number of consonants, dispensing with the once essential vowel. In fact, it has always been know that a phrase without vowels can be easily understood as in, `The qck brwn fx jmpd vr th lzy dg.’ Or, from another angle, the same text with all but the first and last letters rearranged (excluding two and three letter words), can also be readily recognized, e.g. The qicuk brwon fox jmuepd oevr the lzay dog.’

Quick and Effective

Punkgramma

Stepping aside from the merits and otherwise of fast messaging, what about the current generation’s ability on a non-direct communication level, to write clear well-punctuated prose? We still read books, magazines, and newspapers; don’t we? So, what is the future prognosis here? Recent tests and surveys, aimed at students as high as university degree level, are already showing a marked decline in general comprehension, grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

But it’s not only the young; parents and grandparents are jumping on the bandwagon to be always and quickly available. As they forge their way into the scary new world of `punkgramma,’ they are creating an acceptance that otherwise might be a longer time coming.

So the question must be asked; `If all and sundry become Punkgrammatiks, who is going to be left to carry the flag of our amazingly beautiful and functional English language as it once was flown?

Time and Business

Perhaps time is the thing? Everyone seems to be short of it. Most of us work all year to take a break and hopefully save enough for our annual holiday, or doing it back to front by paying for it with the credit card and spending the rest of the following year paying it off.

Holidays are usually an expensive time but there is a recent trend towards luxury cruises for the masses – a bit like Blackpool on a boat. Parents can enjoy their holiday knowing the children have enough activities on board to keep them happy elsewhere, with staff to watch over them, and they can get on with enjoying the break they need to refresh their motivation and get rested in time for the next year’s round of work and debt paying.

Everyone needs a break, it’s just a pity that it has to cost so much.

Remembering that more and more companies are employing their staff on a contract basis; where speed and time-management are critical to meet the required end result, an added burden is created. They HAVE to come back and work harder than ever, not only to meet the mortgage payments and the bills, but to pay for the much needed holiday and all its inevitable add-ons.

Subsequently, determined real estate agents, car sales people, retailers, trades folk and professionals, will extract your details from you in whatever way possible. Then to be true to their calling, and seeing you as a potential `sale,’ they will stay in touch. Enter the low level-intrusive text or email, sometimes guiding you to their promotional blog.

To make a sale (so they can eat) these folk will do whatever it takes to ensure you remain their `hot prospect.’ If you have ever attended an open home, wandered onto a car lot, chatted with a switched-on white ware sales person, you will probably have experienced the after-calls and follow-ups.

It has become common practice for businesses and services to jog forgetful minds by text or email reminders to avoid empty time slots. And, keeping up with the times, even politicians are streamlining their own communications along similar lines, particularly in election year.

21st century lives are busy, busy, busy. It’s no wonder we don’t stop and think about where the comma should go, or the sentence should end. People simply do not have the time to think about it because to do so might put them critical moments behind the competition. And heaven forbid that we should worry about such superfluous ciphers as commas and full stops, never mind speech marks, apostrophes and semi-colons.

They will all come back, of course. They have been around too long to be discarded in quite such a casual manner. Most fashionable pursuits eventually come full circle and fortunately (hopefully?), there are still enough `word purists’ who will continue to laud the attributes of our wonderful language in all its fullness and wealth and keep it alive and blossoming.

It has to be this way because, without them, the alternatives are all too ghastly to think about.

Imagine a language where the aahs and eeehs and the ooohs and ughs, are replaced with bland colourless mmms and grrrrs, hmmms and brmmms.

No-nonsense and practical? Expediant? Efficient? Probably all these but, for my part, I’d add `horrifying’ and `terrifying’ to the list.