Proof Read!

I don't know if it's the English major in me or the teacher in me, but I am EXTREMELY bothered by the grammar and punctuation errors commonly found on the Internet. It seems every article or website I visit has glaring errors within its pages. I know that the Internet has become a casual, user-friendly, socially-oriented community that links many different social, cultural and economic groups. The Internet offers a plethora of knowledge for anyone willing to dig for it. But lets face it, the Internet is full of fluff and junk. It has become a place where there are no real guidelines, rules or overseers. Although this allows for enormous creativity and self expression, it also has created the WORST writing, spelling and punctuation know in the history of man!

OK, so the English Major in me is rearing her head and reminds me that throughout history, spelling has been fluid and open to frequent change and modification. Perhaps with the volume of things written in this technology-saturated age, we should expect a surge of new spelling, grammar and style of recording of information.

But the teacher in me is appalled at the laziness of people. How hard it it to use spell check? And if you write an article and expect it to be considered valid and worthy of note, how difficult is it to have a buddy proof read it for major grammatical mistakes?

I wish there was a business that paid people to proofread and check websites for errors. I like reading random articles online. I like telling people they are wrong. Let me combine the two and make some money at it! But alas, I fear our society has turned a new page. Not many people care about grammar/spelling errors. Many more than that do not even recognize the errors. Do we need to go back to to the days when hours were spent in class torturing children with the horrors of diagramming sentences? I will be the first to tell you that teaching parts of speech is frustrating and seems useless. But when a sentence is a fragment, run on, or makes NO SENSE at all, writers need to be able to recognize what is missing and FIX IT.

I'm willing to let a fragment, run on or misplaced modifier remain for the sake of the art of writing. But to commit these worst of writing errors unknowingly and without care is a bit cavalier. We need some order and structure to writing and spelling or else we will all become dumber and less articulate for it!!

My conclusion: I suggest you read material that is edited as often as possible. Save your brain!

Side Note: I checked for spelling and grammar twice before publishing this. I came back an hour later and found ANOTHER mistake. It seems that even the lowly English major makes mistakes....but at least I FIX them.