“I weep for the future.”
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Directed by John Hughes – 1986
Let me just say this: I am not without sin.
I make spelling mistakes. I make grammar mistakes. I make past-participle / conjugation / subject-predicate / and-everything-else mistakes. But it still bothers me.
And for the record, I do at least press the damned “spell-check” button before posting or sending emails. It’s there! Its entire purpose is to be used! It takes all of 3 seconds! And so, I fulfill its destiny. I press it. I heed its advice. Mostly.
If you’re thinking, “Mikki – what the? What prompted this hullabaloo?” Well, I’ll tell ya.
I read a post on the Wall Street Journal’s site. It struck a nerve. I wasn’t really affected by the Twitter references. Nor do I give much thought to texting and its language manipulation. I get character limits. Do the best with what you’ve got. Okay.
But business letters? Published books? Printed promotional materials? No. I do not accept grammar and spelling errors here. I can’t tell you how upsetting it is to be reading a book – printed by a major publishing company – and be jerked out of an author’s reality by the sight of misspelled words. Unintentionally misspelled words. When that happens, an editor should lose a job. Nothing should make it so far as to be published without first having been checked about a jillion times. (Yes, I’m choosing to let “jillion” slide.)
Now I’m rambling. And that can be just as bad as (if not worse than) poor grammar. I apologize. I tend to react emotionally to the dumbing-down of my country. And make no mistake, we are – as a whole – dumbing ourselves down. I don’t like it. I will not grow to like it. And that’s that.
So please forgive me for this tirade. I’ll try to not let it happen again. And if you’ve tallied unintentional errors in the above text, feel free to hold it against me. Your disappointment in me will surely pale in comparison to my own.