“The French don’t care what they *do*, actually…”

“… as long as they pronounce it properly.” 

Words spoken by Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady” – both on stage and on film. I’m wondering if that sentiment, however, has spilled over from the French to the everyday person. Why wonder? Well, have you actually read things going on in chat rooms? Or people trying to seem intelligent as they respond to news articles with their oh-so-witty, yet oh-so-meaningless responses (where the meaninglessness of it goes away if you read it aloud)? 

Grammar 

That’s right. I’m talking about grammar. Apparently gone are the days when English teachers beat correct use of language into students’ heads. “Your right!” is an oft-seen response to a correct statement in chat rooms. “There going to have to make a better effort” as seen in a response to a USA Today article. 

If you don’t see what’s wrong with the statements, let us examine the homonym. 

Homonyms are words that sound the same as others, but with completely differing meanings. Facebook Flair (if you’re curious about the name ‘flair’, rent a copy of the movie “Office Space” and it will make sense) is riddled with misuses of homonyms, and yet there are buttons made up that express the same peeve as I have. 

At least some people see it

 

Has education become that lax that we have to create Facebook flair to point out proper use of grammar? Or is it more that people just don’t care enough about it? I hope it’s the latter. What worries me is that I have seen an increase in misuse of words. I’m more forgiving of it in informal settings like chat rooms and such, but when you receive a corporate memo on letterhead, supposedly from the CEO of the company, and it’s riddled with incorrectly used homonyms, I wonder where things went wrong. 

As annoying, and as misused is the poor, poor apostrophe. When did pluralization result in an S preceded by an apostrophe? “Get your ticket’s here!” What, exactly am I getting my ticket, and does my ticket really need something if I’m going to hand it over to the ticket taker in a matter of minutes? 

The apostrophe is so badly abused that Lynne Truss has written a clever book entitled Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, and has given at least one entire chapter to the apostrophe. (If you pick up the book, the anecdote explaining the title is pretty freakin’ cute!) Beyond that, in 2001, a fellow by the name of John Richards started “The Apostrophe Protection Society“. 

If you think preserving proper use of grammar is a necessity, take a look at The Apostrophe Protection Society’s Examples of abuse images – some are worth a heartier chuckle than others. 

As an aside – a Flair fail I found yesterday while looking for the ones above: 

I can't help but chuckle at the irony of the "your stupid" statement.

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