Month: June 2012

Grammar Wars: Coming Soon to Your Office*

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The Wall Street Journal today (June 21, 2012, first day of summer) ran a piece about the generational divide on grammar usage, which after reading I've dubbed "Grammar Wars."

In the piece, "This Embarrasses You and I," Sue Shellenbarger contrasts traditionalist firms, where the King's English is still honored, with places such as RescueTime in Seattle, where "140 characters and sound bytes" are considered the non plus ultra of English communications. The latter firm is staffed mostly by 30somethings (or younger), it seems.

"Those who can be sincere, and still text and Twitter and communicate on Facebook—those are the ones who are going to succeed," says Jason Grimes, 38, vice president of product marketing. (My question: Does succeed merely mean making $$$?)

Now consider the view of Don Silver (age undisclosed), who runs a marketing and crisis-consulting firm in Ft. Lauderdale. He fines new hires 25 cents for every English error he finds in their written work, but he admits, "I am losing the battle."

Do Twitter and the social media spell the end of traditional (read: correct) English usage? Probably, but I won't be around when people can't spell "you" anymore or when "8" is used instead of any "ate" or "eight" sound (e.g., w8 for weight, h8 for hate, etc.).

I believe that great literature, if it's still being written in the cyber future, will always use the King's English, but everything else has a good chance of being a bunch of sounds, symbols, hashtags, grunts, groans and outright misspellings.

Oh, h8ful day.

* If they're not there already.

PS If you cringe at the title to Ms. Shellenbarger's article and can identify the reason, then you're probably on my side.

What to Do With That Final ‘E’?

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I had to open my big mouth during a brainstorming session recently at work (I know, I know, no nega-comments during these sessions) when I corrected the moderator's white-board spelling of judgment, in which he had included the e after the g. as the Brits and Aussies do.

Later, the word knowledgeable made its way to the board, so the moderator–fearful of my puritanical addiction to classic American English usage–took the e out.

At least this time, my spelling observation led to a group discussion of what to do with the e in words when you add things at the end. We resolved nothing then, but we agreed that loveable without the e just wouldn't pronounce correctly.

The brainstorming moved on from there, but later I decided to look up the rule for dropping and keeping the e. Here's what I found, as least concerning the addition of suffixes:

1) Drop the e if the suffix begins with a vowel: use+able=usable

2) Retain the e if the suffix begins with a consonant: use+full=useful (where did the second l go?)

Which brings us back to judgment. Ment starts with a consonant, so where's the e?

Maybe British English has it right after all (but of course, ment isn't necessarily a suffix).

Anyway, those two rules should hold sway most of the time. The rest of the time, just pick a different word if you're unsure of the spelling. Single syllable words always work well without a bunch of confusing rules (but you run the risk of sounding and reading like a mental midget is you just use single-syllable words).