Following on yesterday’s item about the death of the great Richie Hayward, the Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten gives us another decedent to mourn: the English language. Cause of death: email, texting, bloggers, and the decline of large-scale, professionally edited journalism.
We read:
The language’s demise took few by surprise. Signs of its failing health had been evident for some time on the pages of America’s daily newspapers, the flexible yet linguistically authoritative forums through which the day-to-day state of the language has traditionally been measured. Beset by the need to cut costs, and influenced by decreased public attention to grammar, punctuation and syntax in an era of unedited blogs and abbreviated instant communication, newspaper publishers have been cutting back on the use of copy editing, sometimes eliminating it entirely.
In the past year alone, as the language lay imperiled, the ironically clueless misspelling “pronounciation” has been seen in the Boston Globe, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Deseret Morning News, Washington Jewish Week and the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, where it appeared in a correction that apologized for a previous mispronunciation.
On Aug. 6, the very first word of an article in the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal was “Alot,” which the newspaper employed to estimate the number of Winston-Salemites who would be vacationing that month.
The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of “spading and neutering.” The Miami Herald reported on someone who “eeks out a living” — alas, not by running an amusement-park haunted house. The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star described professional football as a “doggy dog world.” The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald and the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune were the two most recent papers, out of dozens, to report on the treatment of “prostrate cancer.”
Some will say that Mr. Weingarten is over-exaggerating the problem; that English isn’t really in such dire straights. Others could care less. But as a daily blogger, faultless English is my stock and trade, and I think that for all intensive purposes he’s right.
That’s my opinion, anyway. What’s your’s?
12 Comments
“Others could care less.”
No professional editor would let that phrase pass. That’s my opinion.
Right you are!
What do we have for him, Johnny?
“The point is mute.” That kills me. And I’ve ranted about vocative commas.
Hey, Kevin, that’s an excellent post.
Thanks.
“for all intensive purposes he’s right.”
As Mr. Mason my 9th grade English teacher, would have done I stopped reading at “could care less”, but now I see that boner follows.
intensive careless?
Malcolm, aren’t you going to tell everyone that the last paragraph is one big joke? And I’m surprised no one picked up on “over-exaggerating”.
[sigh]
Well, if I must…
Ahem… That last paragraph is one big, six-pronged joke.
I suppose the title will be noticed eventually also.
Jeez, maybe I should stick to politics.
Six? I only count 5! I get …
1. Over-exaggerating
2. straights
3. care less
4. stock and trade
5. intensive
What did I miss?
“Death Nail” is one of those odd mistakes — it’s actually better than the original.
Well, actually that paragraph isn’t really the last one… so five is right. One more a bit later.
Idea for future post: the deflating effect of humor-analysis.
I got your humor. Including the self-conscious “commafication” of your reply to my comment.
Never doubted it, Kevin.
And, of coarse, the missing comma is intensional.
Jeffery Hodges
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