It has always astounded me why there are so few people in society that write with any coherence and/or basic correctness. Journalists and authors aside, I have witnessed very few individuals who have any expected, even minimum grade-school-level expertise, in communicating via the written word. Presidents have their ghostwriters; CEO’s and managerial personnel, in the business world mega-conglomerates, as well as ministers, doctors, and lawyers have their secretaries to transcribe. How many times it has been remarked, “Oh, I was never good in English.” The gargantuan challenge of such state testing mandates, (gratis G.W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act”) as the MCAS (Massachusetts), GCAT (Georgia), FCAT (Florida), etc. is nothing but a feeble, and contrary to media-Bush reports, rapidly failing effort to spearhead the problem with primary, middle, and high school students. However, I am referring to high school and college graduates, not to students who still remain in the educational process. Why is it thought that one must be a literary master such as Mark Twain or Ernest Hemingway to be able to effectively communicate via the written word? Specifically, what is the problem in understanding the difference, learned from primary-school years, between it’s and its; well and we’ll; hell and he’ll; to and too; there, their, and they’re; lose and loose; affect and effect; compliment and complement; president and precedent; council and counsel, etc. Additionally, what is so unbearably difficult to understand that the pronoun I – not the simple letter -- is always capitalized even in contractions (I’d, I’m I’ve, etc.)? English-speaking people, especially Americans, have always been criticized for this by foreigners, due to our “egotistical attitude,” but this simple fact of grammar, again dictated by the people’s usage of the language, remains. If Jim is going to the shooting range and his wife is not, cannot even a minimally-educated person readily see the difference between: “John will shoot Mary will not.” (constituting a serious run-on sentence, which forces the reader to instantly and unconsciously re-read the sentence, lest Mary get shot upon its initial reading) and “John will shoot. Mary will not.”? What is so unbearably difficult about understanding that a comma is never an end punctuation mark, and consequently, inserting a comma after Mary is just as serious an error as omitting it -- and correctly inserting a period or semicolon? Simple rule – and people make the rules via the usage of the language – not (contrary to popular thought) grammarians or lexicographers: If it’s a complete thought, it requires one of the six end punctuation marks (period, question mark, exclamation point, colon, semicolon, and ellipsis.) A comma is never one of them. |
Cannot the minimally educated adult instantly see the difference in clarity between “John ran for the bus was ready to leave” vs. “John ran, for the bus was ready to leave”? Or: “While we were eating the dog began to bark” vs. “While we were eating, the dog began to bark.”? Cannot the average adult instantly recognize the ambiguity in such a statement as “Sally told Mary she was obese,” immediately prompting the query: Who was obese? Mary or Sally?
I’ve heard it so many times, not only from my adolescent students, but also from so many adults: “Oh, I don’t care. (S)he knows what I mean.” Really? As with anything else in society, complacency kills.
Correct, basic spelling and punctuation are the foundations to any language, the simple tools created by man centuries ago to create clarity and understanding. If such tools are utilized haphazardly, the communication process becomes a disaster. Avoiding the disaster does not require anyone to be a linguistic genius. WJK-08/05 |
