So Grammatic!

I've been noticing, as I'm sure many of you have, that there seems to be a growing trend in slaughtering the English language.

"I like to blame everything on MTV ever since they stopped making MUSIC videos and just started making stripper videos. It just feels good."

Texts, instant messages, blogs and all manner of unedited text is being strewn around the globe at the speed of light through fiber-optic broadband and satellite.

Now, I'm not normally one to accomplish perfection in every piece of writing that comes out of my brain and I'm certain that at least one of my writer friends will read something in this blog and say things like, "Ugh, look at that misplaced comma!" or "How could she have missed that incorrect spelling? Doesn't she proofread?" So I don't pretend that I don't add to the decline of Western Civilization with the occasional dangling participle, an inappropriate voice change or by ending a sentence with a preposition, not to mention my use of colloquialisms and words that I've just plain made up. But I do try, and let's face it; it has been a while since I've been in school.

The memory fails.

But back to my wonderment. As I browse the web and watch grammar, spelling and punctuation slowly fade into the obscureness of history, I can't help but wonder if this is something that only occurs in the U.S.? Is it our laziness? Is it MTV's fault? (I like to blame everything on MTV ever since they stopped making MUSIC videos and just started making stripper videos. It just feels good.) Is it our fast-paced lives that pulls us away from spelling things out? Or is it just our failing educational system? (Could things really be that bad that our educators have given up teaching?)

Maybe it's the media's fault - everything gets blamed on the media, why not this?

Why not blame the media? Every day we are bombarded with new and fashionable ways to say and do things. Things are "Bad Azz" or "Kewl" not to mention how we "Luv" the "Xtreme" or "Klassy." So it's only natural that some of these would end up in the use of everyday language.

Then there are signs that simply prove that there are no editors in print shops anymore.

How is it possible that some of these signs get put out there into the public?

Since this is the stuff that our kids read and see every day, is there any wonder that there is no respect for the language?

There are some who are completely offended by grammatical errors and  even those who are extremely lax in that department find occasions where they just can't help but scream, "Please! Please! Could you just grace us with the use of a period once in a while?"

Sometimes the bombardment of this kind of mind-dulling interference can have undesirable effects on the human psyche and has even been known to turn normally law abiding citizens into criminals.

Of course, it doesn't really matter who gets the blame. The way things are going it seems that it is only inevitable that we will soon be heading back to our roots; back to the days of cave-dwellers. Pretty soon we'll all be drawing pictures on our walls to describe what we want to say.

Oh wait!

Ah! Who needs language anyway!

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