Well, I’m happy to say that I am not the the only one out there who finds those pesky “grocers’ commas” annoying! The BBC recently posted a magazine article on the influence of grammar on relationships. Yes, that’s relationships. And I can honestly say, my fiance and I both noted the use of proper punctuation and grammar in emails and instant messages as one of the things that we found impressive about each other. How about you? Is bad grammar a turn off? Do you have any grammar pet peeves you’d like to share?
Apostrophe Now!
May 17, 2013
Interesting post/article and very timely. Just last week I was having a conversation with a friend about this very subject…
She is a manager at a government agency and noticed that a few members of her staff were filling out forms/reports using “text code” i.e. substituting “u r” for “you are”. She of course, told them that these were official documents for the files and that it wasn’t appropriate. Their response was that because of time constraints and the mobile technology that they were using to complete the forms/reports, they did not see anything wrong with it and are continuing to do this.
Is this a case of youth? ignorance? insubordination? apathy?
Maybe it’s all 4.
In this era of texting and twittering I feel that our youth is falling into bad habits and don’t understand that what they do in their leisure time is completely different from what they do professionally.
Perhaps I’m old-school but at work (and in life) I always “attempt” to use proper grammar, punctuation etc. and if my manager were to say that something was inappropriate I would fix whatever I was doing – pronto.
Save the “text code” for twitter.
OH…and like, don’t get me started on like, using the word “like” !