Posted on 06/20/2012 6:30:54 AM PDT by Constitutionalist Conservative
When Caren Berg told colleagues at a recent staff meeting, "There's new people you should meet," her boss Don Silver broke in, says Ms. Berg, a senior vice president at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., marketing and crisis-communications company.
"I cringe every time I hear" people misuse "is" for "are," Mr. Silver says. The company's chief operations officer, Mr. Silver also hammers interns to stop peppering sentences with "like." For years, he imposed a 25-cent fine on new hires for each offense. "I am losing the battle," he says.
Managers are fighting an epidemic of grammar gaffes in the workplace. Many of them attribute slipping skills to the informality of email, texting and Twitter where slang and shortcuts are common. Such looseness with language can create bad impressions with clients, ruin marketing materials and cause communications errors, many managers say.
[...]
Mr. Garner, the usage expert, requires all job applicants at his nine-employee firm—including people who just want to pack boxes—to pass spelling and grammar tests before he will hire them. And he requires employees to have at least two other people copy-edit and make corrections to every important email and letter that goes out.
"Twenty-five years ago it was impossible to put your hands on something that hadn't been professionally copy-edited," Mr. Garner says. "Today, it is actually hard to put your hands on something that has been professionally copy-edited."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
My standard response: “and after he was like, like that, how did you, like, go?”
You are right. I forgot the new version and quoted the old way. The “like” version is really bad since “goes” at least implies some sort of action.
To me, "Yourself" comes in second to "myself".
E.G., "To myself, "Yourself" comes in second to "myself""
What in heck happened to "you", "I" and "me"? Not weighty enough for the self-esteem kids?
They really embrace that "rhyming slang" pestilence, too. As language butchery goes, that's a veritable Jack the Ripper.
It's not a rule, it's simply a guideline. Stylistically, its use can be defended from time to time, though it's not something I would use too often.
We used to see a woman occasionally, we called her “ole exactly” because no matter what you said she agreed by saying “exactly”! You could not start an argument with this woman even if you tried. Not sure if she held any opinions of her own.
Juiceboxers—I love it.
Juiceboxers—I love it.
Me and my wife see this all the time.
They aren’t sucking anything up. They don’t care what you think. Grammar nazis sound like the grownups in Peanuts to the people around them, just a bunch of “whawhawha”. Nobody’s trashed nothing, it’s just how things go. The people of the 19th century would be just as appalled at your grammar as you are at modern grammar, the only difference is you have a Strunk and White to say you’re right.
—I’m, like, kinda flummoxed by that, you know? ;-)—
Yeah. I was reading your post and I was, like, “totally”.
Thank you for posting this. As a former copy editor, I cringe when I hear the younger generation speak and read much of what they write. Apparently, English is no longer taught in our schools.
Illiteracy is not a stage in linguistic evolution. Illiteracy is devolution. It has always been around. The politically incorrect truth is that standards have slipped because in these days of democracy and equality, the bottom rail’s on top. People who know better are shoved aside, or else shamed into casting away the culture and refinement that would have distinguished them in a better age. This flatters the ignorant mob, which loves to imagine it’s in charge.
According to people I know who are teachers, schools no longer stress grammar and spelling. The kids are “going to do it wrong, anyway,” so the teachers have thrown in the towel. I guess prior generations were capable of learning spelling and grammar, but today’s kids cannot or will not.
Another problem is that often, the teachers themselves are rotten at spelling and grammar.
To be fair, English is his second language (or maybe third.)
It’s not illiteracy, they can read, they can write, they just don’t put the words in the order a 100 year old book says they should. Which is your problem, not theirs.
Hi back at ya! I’m around, but do more lurking than posting of late.
Garden is doing very well, thank you. How is all in your world?
I’ve always been a stickler for spelling and grammar, but even I slip up. It’s hilarious when my 13 yo catches me and corrects me!
Is you disrepecting me?
And what about the ubiquitous use of "sort of" and "kind of?"
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