I read in a book recently that when Shakespeare didn’t know a word that conveyed what it is that he wanted to say, he made one up. If he didn't have the correct way to say it, spell it, punctuate it, he made it up. This makes Shakespeare totally GANGSTA!
First Gangsta ever, or not, we can attribute a ridiculous amount of words and phrases that we use 100 times a day - to one man; Billy Shakespeare. Every time you say flesh and blood, or good riddance, or love is blind (which it totally is!), you have him to thank. There are many more - and in fact, I found some of them so fascinating, that I have them footnoted so that you, too, may be amazed.
And as far as words go, Dude has the English language market cornered on coming up with them. Words like critical (how would anyone be able to properly describe me if it weren't for Shakespeare?!), and excellent (again, how would I be portrayed properly?!). The list goes on and on, but you catch my drift: William Shakespeare was the bomb - and probably even made up "the bomb" - when looking for the words to describe himself, of course.
However, neither you, nor I, nor rappers, school teachers, mothers, brothers, circus clowns, doctors, actors, hitchhikers, teenagers, CEO's, or astronauts are William Shakespeare. We must realize this.
We cannot make up words. The words we make up are stupid, and sound like "dizzle". We cannot run on because we don't know when to stop, and we can't stop before we're done (of course I'm referring to run-on sentences and fragments). We have capital letters and lower case letters for a reason, and although its cute to have your "personality" come out in the fact that you write in all lower case with no periods, I CAN'T READ IT.
Also, that's a sad state of a personality.
What I'm getting at is my horror with what has become of the written language these days. Not that anyone actually writes anymore (think pen, paper...you remember) - so that point is moot. I'm taking about email. EMAIL. Otherwise known as the demise of the literately educated.
I read what seems like thousands of emails a day. Some are quick little 'post-it notes' if you will, and some are considered 'documents'. You know how I can tell the difference between the two? 9 times out of 10, I can't.
Can you even imagine if John Adams penned correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, and wrote something like:
(No Salutation)
I was thinkign that we should rite some kind os declaration of independance docu so that our emancipation (sp?) from britan is legit and so the people of the united states knw whats currently going down and whats going to go down frm hear on out
thoughts?
Johnny :)
Giggle all you want, but you TOTALLY know what I mean. If that was the case, I highly doubt they'd make an HBO mini-series on the man (I'd say 'or let him be President' - but we know that's not true).
In an age of spell check (and even spell check's red-headed stepchild, grammar correction) emails still arrive looking like the one I illustrated above. Sometimes its not even stupidity, its laziness! Its not even giving it a once over before hitting the dreaded 'send' button.
How is this acceptable?
Educated, decorated, highly-schooled individuals have somehow digressed to being hormonal teens electronically. These people will send 5 paragraph emails in one paragraph (sometimes with very few, if any periods).
People....will....use....the...ellipse...to a completely ridiculous....extent....
there are correspondences in all lower case, like the person is either really tiny, or they're whispering.
OR IN ALL CAPS, LIKE THE PERSON IS SCREAMING (OR HAS A SMALL PENIS).
There are hardly any salutations (like "Dear" - what ever happened to "Dear"?!) and at the end, if you get any sign-off, its often times "- ". Remember "Sincerely"? I sincerely do.
Not to mention the apostrophe. Apostrophes are misused more than tits on a bull. People just don't know how to show possession like they used to.
And not to be a total snob (I may have a degree in English, but I can barely spell English, and until recently, I combined "a lot" into "alot" - which is inexcusable) - so - not to be a snob, but COME ON. People who made it past the 3rd grade and don't know the difference between their, they're and there and here and hear (notice the letter above...bet you didn't even notice!), bear and bare, and my biggest pet peeve, advise and advice - need to stop writing emails.
From what I can tell, the electronic age blew the doors off of the 99.9% of people who got through school not writing a damn thing. How else can this be explained? How do you make it to adulthood without knowing where a period goes?
As for the Next Generation, I have officially written them off as a lost cause. We're going to have to think of a different name for the English language in about 30 years. Like, "Acronymish" - where everything is BTW, OMG, LOL, JNTIY and where 'please' is actually spelled with a 'z'.
But the Next Generation cannot be blamed. We can. Anyone born before 1985 should know better than to let it be known that they drastically overuse or ridiculously under use the comma. Especially if you're drafting the Declaration of Independence - or something equally important, like a memo about the unnecessary use of an overabundance of toilet paper in the office bathroom - you want to be grammatically professional, no?
The way that I see it, is that the everyday written word is on the endangered species list and we may not be able to save it. But as always, there's a silver lining to this: if emails cannot be deciphered through lack of punctuation, might we pick up the phone again...and talk to one another?
As Shakespeare would say - it'll come full circle.
Sincerely,
Christy
*bated breath, tower of strength, foul play, foregone conclusion, good riddance, dead as a doornail, fool's paradise, heart of gold, Greek to me, fancy-free, devil incarnate, one fell swoop, for goodness' sake, vanish into thin air, eaten me out of house and home, elbow room, in a pickle, budge an inch, cold comfort, household word, in my heart of hearts, in my mind's eye, laughing stock, lie low, naked truth, neither rhyme nor reason, star-crossed lovers, pound of flesh, sea change, spotless reputation, there's the rub, too much of a good thing, what the dickens and wild goose chase.
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