A Language Rant

It’s a ranting day for me. Today’s rant is aimed at the devolution of language, which is fine in and of itself. Language is fluid. It has evolved over millennia, adapting to societal changes, reflecting our beliefs and cultures, but always, always it has remained our primary method of communication, whether spoken or written.

It is of the latter I’ve been frothing for the past few weeks, to the point today I felt the necessity to address the issue. The written word, for me, is something sacred, even mystical. Unlike any other art form writing has the ability to create an entire mood and world that can, if done well, utterly transport a reader, foment change, raise us up and drop us to our knees. Music is the only other art form, in my opinion, that can come close to having the power and effect of good writing.

How is it, then, there are so many aspiring authors out there who think they can possibly achieve their goals, reach their audience, if they can’t string together a coherent, well-structured sentence with at least an attempt at proper spelling and grammar? Whenever I’ve been asked to appraise such a manuscript, I’ve politely told the writer that when they polish their work and address the essential elements of spelling and grammar, I’d be pleased to evaluate their work. But until then, sorry.

Often that statement is met with incredulity and anger. How dare I be so pretentious, so, so, mean!

No, it’s not pretension. It’s not being mean. It’s called caring enough about your work to make sure it goes out properly dressed.

I’m often told, rather glibly, that an editor will take care of all ‘that stuff’.

Actually, no, they won’t. Sending out a story full of grammatical and spelling errors is like sending it out with strawberry jam smearing the pages. How is an editor supposed to get past that?

I am further appalled when met with emails, forum posts, as well as manuscripts that are rife with gamer-speak idioms. I refer to items such as: ‘i don no y ur mad, cuz ill brb.’ I kid you not. Fine in the action and heat of MMOLRPG (massive, multi-player, online role-playing game), but let’s not forget that when crafting an article, or a story, even an email or post, that you have to communicate. And that means full words, with punctuation, capitalization, and grammatical structure. This is your calling card, your ability to write. It says to people this person has a degree of intelligence worth attending. It says this person cares.