I’m sorry, but what the heck does that even mean?  I saw this on a billboard advertising for a local hospital while driving into town one day and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  Aside from the fact that it’s just wrong grammatically,  it apparently assumes that I want or need to get back to me, whatever that was.  Do they mean physically, mentally or emotionally?  What if I want to be better than the me I was before they got hold of me?  Can I only return to the me I was immediately before I saw these people?  And what makes them think they can actually get me back to me and how will they know?  Or is it all up to me to know and should I tell them?  Is “me” the me I was yesterday or ten years ago?  This just leaves me with so many questions!  Can you imagine the money spent by this hospital for some marketing firm to come up with this ambiguous sentence?

A lot of ambiguity comes in the guise of trying to appear clever.  “Think Different”.  What ever happened to adverbs?!?  How difficult is it for someone to add a little “ly” to the end of the word?  The adverb is describing the verb “think”.  HOW are you going to think?  Why DIFFERENTLY, of course.  Unless you’re in advertising apparently.

But I shouldn’t just pick on the marketing industry.  Email is a great way to misconstrue all kinds of information and the funny thing is, the sender completely understands what they meant, but somehow the message gets all jumbled up in the typing before it reaches you.  For instance, I received an email about a conference I’m attending and an event that follows it.  The conference runs from Tuesday through Friday afternoon.  The writer then tells me that  the event will be the weekend directly following the conference.  I assumed it would be the following two days, while this person meant the NEXT weekend.  When I emailed him back for clarification, he came back saying he realized his sentence was “ever so slightly confusing”. Ya think?

These are really tiny little issues with incorrect sentence structure, neglected adverbs and assumed detail and only one sentence was involved.  So, can you imagine a group, let’s say our national leadership (and don’t get me started on the definition of leadership),  reading and writing God knows how many emails, bills, etc., where things get confused and misconstrued all the time.  No wonder people can’t agree with each other!  Seriously, we have spent months focused on the two words “fake news”.   Is the news itself fake or is the person reporting making it up?  Is the person faking the happening of an event and that’s being reported? Can you really have fake news?  The definition of news is “new information or a report about something that has happened recently”.  So, if the news is fake, can we really call it news at all because news is supposed to be about something that has happened recently and if it didn’t happen, then it’s not news.  Just asking. Words are great, aren’t they?

I have been called the grammar police and worse, but we live in a world of abbreviations, acronyms and emojis, and our communication skills as a society are deteriorating rapidly.  Like music, words have the power to touch people’s emotions, convey new ideas, change people’s points of view and more.  Used in the correct way, they can change the way the world thinks and operates.  I think of people like Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, and Nelson Mandela who used powerful, heartfelt WORDS – without technology, billboards, and advertisements – to change generations of people around the world.  This is a gift I believe we’re losing and something that I plan to work on personally, only because I want to do all I can to make my little corner of the world a better place.  Clear communication through the use of beautiful words can make a difference for everyone.  And maybe THAT’S how I’ll choose to get back to me : )