The first thing I reach for in reading a newspaper is the opinion section. And when going online, to read other newspapers, I click until the editorials, columns and letters to the editor show up.<\/p>\n
In short, I luuuuve to read other people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s opinions. But that (reading others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 opinions) comes with a price: namely fighting my urge to correct people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spelling, grammar and punctuation. Often, I miss the points others make because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m too busy chasing commas, run-on sentences and words that dangle.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve noticed a gradual decline in people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ability to spell: the your\/you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re issue appears insoluble as does the wont of some to over-punctuate.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
A friend and I have a term for the excessive use of punctuation. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re both familiar with a young woman who likes to belt out her punctuation marks, like this !!!!! or interrogatively, like this: ????? We even tack on an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to her name to give the term legitimacy. Our belief is that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153less is more,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear when everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s screaming.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Each added mark of punctuation screams, and how much screaming can we tolerate?<\/p>\n
Imagine the scenario waaaaay back in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s, when I carpooled with a fellow teacher thrice a week, from Zuni to Gallup. The rules were that the driver determines what we listen to on the radio. That was a loooong time before the advent of tape and CD players in cars, so our choices were one of two radio stations in the area.<\/p>\n
My car-mate, Viola, liked to listen to music while speaking loudly. If I winced, in a manner that indicated I failed to understand her, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d get loouuuuder, but in doing so, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d also crank up the radio.<\/p>\n
Two seconds later, the radio would be toooo loud, so she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d crank up her own volume. Radio not loud enough? No problem; let me turn the knob juuuussst a touch.<\/p>\n
And experiences like that convinced me of the goldenness of silencio, or at least of modulation.<\/p>\n
So now we have issues with volume, elongated words and non-stop punctuation. Locate an online discussion and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find someone invariably peppering his or her pronouncements with a plenitude of problematic punctuations. A common post will read like this: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How can we cope with a $15 trillion deficit?????<\/p>\n
Once, because an Internet poster kept making repeated appearances \u00e2\u20ac\u201d fraught with multiple marks of punctuation \u00e2\u20ac\u201d on the comment section of the Sacramento Bee, I sent a post with some 50 exclamation points and 25 question marks, tucked neatly between brackets, at the end of my post, inviting the previous poster to feel free to use them as needed. We feared there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be a shortage wrought by that exclaiming, questioning wastrel.<\/p>\n
The March issue of Atlantic contains an article by Jen Doll, titled, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why Drag it Out?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about the tendency of some people not only to drag out speech but writing as well. Accordingly, a modern text on a cell phone would read, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hiiiii\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How are youuuuu?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
According to the writer, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Adults are adding o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to their no\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, s\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to their yes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122es and i\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to their hi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And Dell correctly points out that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is used for quotations and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153so\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for intensification. So like get used to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwow, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so funny.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
I left the teaching of language more than 10 years ago and thus missed the coming of texting, in which people believe they need to use elliptical, telescopic communication in order to finish before the traffic light changes.<\/p>\n
I suspect that the use of initialisms, such as LOL, YOLO, OMG and LMFAO will be with us forever, and indeed some already have been. I was writing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153because\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the margins of student papers waaaay back in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s, when they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d write \u00e2\u20ac\u0153co\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never solve the there-they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re-their problem, but I still keep trying. My worst nightmare involves my lecturing to an English class and having a student raise his hand to ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can you explain the difference between \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and lay\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<\/p>\n
One conscientious student (not in my nightmare), who later became an editor, asked me if I could explain the there-their-they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re conundrum \u00e2\u20ac\u0153once and for all.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. If 16 years of schooling failed to teach him, how could I expect to do it in 10 minutes, especially when on deadline?<\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all heard people lament that the written word simply can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t carry the nuances of spoken language. In face-to-face contact, or even on the phone, we can use tones, pauses, volume, registers to convey anger, anxiety, joy, pleasure, etc. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s harder to do so in writing. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy for the written text simply to fall flat.<\/p>\n
And maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why people try so hard to have the written message replicate speech. Maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why people write \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hiiiii, how are youuuuu?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nWelllll, try it. Imagine yourself as a state legislator who favors keeping senate and house emails out of the prying eyes and hands of the pubic, but you also want people to believe you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re at least open-minded.<\/p>\n
So when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your turn to speak, you utter a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153welllll . . .\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that can only mean, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My mind\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not made up yet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
This topic needs to end now, as it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s become waaaaay too complex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first thing I reach for in reading a newspaper is the opinion section. And when going online, to read other newspapers, I click until the editorials, columns and letters to the editor show up. In short, I luuuuve to read other people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s opinions. But that (reading others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 opinions) comes with a price: namely fighting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1051,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}