Things That Annoy Me, But Shouldn't

And frequently the best way to communicate and be understood is by using words the way people are most likely to understand them rather than very stolidly holding them to our concept of how they should be used or spelt.

 

Or spelled! See? Things change. Formal VS. informal, archaic VS. common, America VS. the world. Ya gots ta roll widdit!

In the war between grammarians and lexicographers, I fall somewhere in the middle of the political isles. Uniformity matters. Grammar and punctuation should be taught and reinforced. Stupid mistakes should be corrected. PROOFREAD BEFORE HITTING SEND, PEOPLE. All these things are true, I think, but when it comes to vocabulary, I'm fascinated by language trends. They're as interesting to watch as changes in art, fashion or pop culture in general. Sometimes people do horrible things with them that lamentably catch on in a big way, but it often has a great deal to do with generational identity and sub/countercultural expression.

@Earp, as to our role as writers, I believe there are rules to follow and rules to break. Grammar and language are reliant but separate entities. I always stick to the common standard (if ever-changing) rules of grammar. Conversely, I feel language is fair game. English is more fun if you actually take it out of the box and play with it. It might be worth less to a collector, but I'll get everything out of it I can before it breaks.

 

Languages of the world are tools. English is a tool bench. Now get back to work! This ain't a union shop!

 

I guess I must be a fuddy-duddy then, cos I'm with @Earp on this. I don't like evolving words and their meanings, because then one generation has no idea what the next is talking about, and vice versa. Life is confusing enough, without having to deal with extra stuff like that. We are already failing immensely with our face to face communications with the help of technology IMO. That's my 2 cents, anyway. Moving on.

 

I don't think that makes either of you fuddy-duddies (duddys? Meh.), but it might mean you, like probably a majority of people, prefer your era's language trends to those that came before and after. There's absolutely no way to be a purist on these things, because they change constantly, if more slowly at times. Every word and character any of us has typed today is the result of thousands of years of language evolution, and we don't have to go very far back to find the evidence. My 2000 reprint of the the 1970 edition of Elements of Style still teaches Oxford commas (a, b, and c). A page from a Charles Dickens book would receive a failing grade in any English class on any continent for the twenty-clause, run-on sentences alone. Children's books from 100-150 years ago are unintelligible to the target age audience today, not to mention half of adults, because the vocabulary fell out of favor. You even used a fairly recent neologism in your post. "Cos", whether you meant the spelling ironically or not, would have appeared strikingly ignorant to a reader fifty years ago.

People hate that cursive writing is disappearing, and maybe that is sad, but have you ever tried to read a page from the 1880 census? Guaranteed there are names on there you cannot decipher. Print from the same era is much easier. Go back a couple of hundred years from there and pick up a random document or correspondence. You find characters that no longer even correspond to modern letters. No one under a certain age is using cursive anyway, so why take time away from grammar, literature, math, science and technology just to teach kids a second way to write? Those teachers who stubbornly forced us to learn how to use card catalogs in the nineties, even though the library had a computer, were absolutely wasting our time.

Language evolves with every generation. Sometimes it's more obvious, and often enough, temporary, as in the case of colloquialisms and slang, but even some of those become a part of the permanent (impermanent) lexicon. The word "okay" was originally "OK", and it came from a youth trend in the 1830's that involved using acronyms as if the words were misspelled, as in "OK" for "oll korrect" (all correct) or "OW" for "oll wright" (all right/alright). "OK" stuck to the point that it's now used in languages around the world. IM-speak might have the same effect long after the trend dies. I imagine common words two-hundred years from now based on "LOL" or "JK". As with the majority of the language, most English speakers of the twenty-third century will be completely oblivious to the origins of the words "elowell" and "jaykays".

Crap. now I want to write a book that incorporates this into future vocabulary. Nobody steel that! (ahroweffell'emmeffayo)

 

I read one time but cannot for the Life of me find a Citation to confirm that Benjamin Franklin decried the "current" Trend of failing to properly capitalize all Nouns as they are in English's Mother Tongue, German.

 

Humanity

 

Speaking of evolving languages, my 13 year old stepdaughter recently introduced my husband and I to a new acronym in "chatspeak". She was texting her dad about this new song she likes, and sent, "Yeah, it's goat!"
Goat.
G.O.A.T.
Greatest of All Time.

This bugs me. A) It's stupid and B) How have I gotten to the point where new slang has to be defined to me? I feel old.

 

The general occupational aptitude test? Brought You by The Goodfellas at vault-tec

Chat speak? Newspeak! 1984 is real

 

There's another example of a word slowly evolving.

 

Or a typo caused by a sticky work computer keyboard. Oops! Fixed.

 

In your case. Under twenty? Not so sure.

 

This was my first thought too when I saw GOAT! Hahaha!

 

Post-coital urination. Straight line (singular), please?

 

Is that a dual gender thing? Do we all share the after love?

 

I thought I was in the What Are You Doing? thread for a moment and was like, whoah, TMI...

 

It's still TMI for me, personally.

 

Could be worse, mid-coital urination tends to offend anyone who hasn't paid extra for it

 

And on that note...oh look, I have some washing up to do!

 

Best to get it taken care of before the stains have a chance to set...

 

And I'm going to order one for my nephew

 

Certainly more offensive than brown play dough offensive. Offensive on many levels of chemistry/ethics. Marketing horror, note the cameo at finish-end!

 

I like how the actress playing an actress has a subtitle noting that she's a paid actor.

Lest we assume it's yet another ISIS fundraising hostage tape, one assumes.