The title should be corrected to read, “don’t grammar matter none no more in 2013.” No need to use your Shift key to capitalize or add a question mark. That key is such a bother. Subject-verb agreement can now go straight out the window, and double, even triple, negatives can abound.
The age of social media is the age of informal communication. Tweeting, emailing, blogging, and texting over the last decade have made it increasingly plain that people in the twenty-first century, particularly the young, rarely bother with grammar. Certainly, students who flunk their grammar classes are rejoicing. It no longer matters how syntactically correct a message is. The concept of right and wrong grammar has given way to the demands of the times, when people hardly find it practical to compose a letter with flawless syntax, spelling, and punctuation. It’s now all about sending a message as quickly and efficiently as possible. Drop the periods and commas. Drop the subject-verb agreement and the proper tenses. No need to spell correctly. Even Yoda speaks better English.
The burden of understanding a sloppily constructed message falls on the recipient. Fortunately, people at the other end often understand abbreviated messages full of grammar gaffes because they are just as guilty. Bothering with the rules of writing is a pointless encumbrance, or so the thinking goes. It’s enough to think about the message when there are so many other, more interesting things to think about, such as how soon Android will release its next upgraded OS.
Grammar Has Become Rare in the Workplace
Sloppily composed messages are not solely in the domain of online posters and cellphone texters. They have become just as ubiquitous in more formal corporate workplaces. A Wall Street Journal article that appeared on June 20, 2012, bemoaned the trend, citing executives who still remember what they learned in English class and who admonish erring employees who seem to represent a new generation that sees nothing wrong with exhibiting a level of illiteracy that makes grammarians cringe.
But the lackadaisical attitude toward the King’s English is not entirely created by the workforce. Company leaders show just as much complacency in allowing the progressive slide toward ungrammatical communication to become the norm in interoffice correspondence, as well as in communications that reach customers, suppliers, and business partners.
This WSJ article mentioned the Seattle-based software developer RescueTime, whose management has never enforced grammar rules on its staff. Employees are mostly in their 30s, and no less than the 38-year-old VP of product marketing, Jason Grimes, stated in unequivocal terms that sincerity and clarity are the hallmarks of communication unfettered by rules. It appears that years of software coding, where abbreviated expressions in anarchic English are the rule, have taken over his better judgment on proper communication. He declared that the ones who will succeed are “those who can be sincere, and still text and Twitter and communicate on Facebook.”
This sentiment clearly points to a continuum from real-world office space to cellphones and cyberspace, characterized by the ease with which messages are worded without the confines of grammar rules. After all, nobody really likes rules. It would seem that communication has acquired the same attitudinal irreverence and contempt that postmodern artists have. Traditional compulsory rules of artistic engagement are readily broken in establishing a borderless creative space that considers just about every sincere expression a work of art.
Some Grammar Rules Are Unclear
Grammar has had its contentious rules, with some violated here and there until the violations become idiomatic norms over time. Take, for instance, the widely accepted expression “Any questions?” Grammatically, this phrase is not a complete sentence, yet after listening to a lecture, it is exactly what an audience routinely expects to hear.
In addition, words that have been traditionally regarded as nouns, such as “impact” and “architect,” have crossed into the domain of verbs as people commonly use “impacted” and “architected” in the jargon of information technology, which has been quite busy coining new expressions in the English lexicon. Indeed, language is a major artifact of a dynamically evolving culture.
But the evolving dimension of language, which often sees a few traditional grammar rules flouted with impunity, does not give anyone license to abandon the rules that have defined what it means to be literate in the language. The evolution of language is not about losing rules. It makes no sense to murder the King’s English for the sake of convenience or to get the message across in what Mr. Grimes considers a clear and sincere way. Grammar has never been solely about clarity or sincerity. Those traits are attributes of writing style. Even the most grammatically correct statements can be ambiguous and hypocritical. In the same vein, sloppily constructed messages are not always sincere or clear.
Not Everyone Is Guilty
Losing the concepts behind what it means to be literate may be symptomatic of a larger social phenomenon in which social and moral values have been eroding over the decades, but not if the more rational members of society have their way. There are still executives such as Bryan A. Garner, president of a Dallas-based staff training and consulting firm, who screen job applicants with spelling and grammar tests while requiring staff to have at least two other employees edit emails and letters sent to parties outside the company.
This US News article sparked a growing debate on the issue of whether grammar still matters. A recent AOL survey showed that 68% of email users find spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors annoying. That means that most Americans can still recognize what is grammatically correct. It would be interesting for such surveys to be conducted every year to see whether the situation is improving. Perhaps it’s about time for concerned grammarians to help that 68% grow.
Conclusion
At the rate grammar lapses have become the norm rather than the exception, it won’t be surprising if archaeologists in the year 3050 excavate the remains of an American civilization from the early twenty-first century and discover a different form of communication. They will analyze and categorize the language as an artifact of an evolved English variant, something akin to a Darwinian evolution in reverse, from humans to apes.
Do you want to make a difference? Do you want to help change the world? If so, please proofread your copy and check your texts before you publish!
Thank you 😉
