I am a grammar freak.  I admit it freely, just like I admit that I’m a control freak.  But that was a few blogs ago.  Sure it’s nerdy, but I had a father who insisted that I use correct grammar, his reasoning being that an intelligent, educated person should be able to speak well.   I also had a high school teacher, Mrs. Voss, who got me excited about diagramming sentences.  I’m not kidding.  I loved breaking the English language apart and figuring out how words worked.  Since then, I’ve had a couple of great professors who taught me how to use the language in my writing and now I love to write.  So you can imagine my slight frustration when I see words that are used incorrectly (notice the “ly”, because it’s an adverb, people!), or are misspelled, articles that go unedited or sentences ending in a preposition.  Not that I don’t slip once in a while, but if you’re going to communicate, especially about something important, it should be done correctly so that you are understood the way you want to be understood.

Nowadays, I hear a lot of people on social media and elsewhere say that it doesn’t matter how you say or spell something as long as the other person understands the meaning.  Well, if that was true, then Bill Clinton wouldn’t have spent so much time on what the definition of “is” is.  Just sayin’.  People in the upper echelons of education, law and other professions spend a lot of time wordsmithing because they understand that if they want to write a position statement or interpret the law, you must understand how to use words effectively.  In some cases it could be the difference between life and death.

As a society, we tend to be pretty hypocritical about this as well.  It’s okay for me to not say or spell things correctly, but anyone in a leadership role is raked over the coals for misspelling something or writing something less than Shakespearean.  It’s okay for us to spout whatever comes into our heads but we and the media take apart every word of what someone else says and analyze every little nuance or lack thereof.  Either writing and speaking correctly is important for everyone or it isn’t.  To separate people based on use of language is – well – a bit bigoted.

Now, I’m not saying that when you’re with your BFF that you need to include all of your thees and thous in the conversation, because I’m sure it will be full of colloquialisms instead.  It should be when you’re in a comfortable, casual situation.  But if you’re going to write or speak about a current event or a political figure, something academic or technical, and be taken seriously, you need to be using the correct words, phrases, spelling, punctuation and editing.  It is the difference between being taken seriously or being dismissed.

But you say, you knew what I meant.  Do I?  Assuming I know what you meant, despite your lack of caring, is well – you know what they say about assuming.  Anything can be interpreted in a number of ways and with less and less face to face conversations, it is more important than ever to get things right in an email or text because at the very least it could be misinterpreted and it’s a permanent record of the things you say.  A permanent record that could come back to haunt you later if someone misinterprets something you’ve said without thinking it through.  Clarity comes through doing our best to use the correct words to get our meaning across and now it needs to convey our emotions as well.

And, despite what degree or degrees you may earn, when it comes time to get a job, your writing is going to be the first impression you give.  If you are going to represent a business or a school, your boss/supervisor wants to know that you won’t embarrass them.  How you present yourself through your speech and writing is important.  And you never know how your lack of attention to this may affect someone.

My youngest son, a highly intelligent young man, was also a very picky young man.  If he thought he knew more than you, he would dismiss you.  He’s calmed down a bit since then. In one of his English classes in high school, the teacher mispronounced the word “epitome”.  He immediately dismissed her because here she was, teaching the very language she was mispronouncing.  Too rough?  Maybe, but that is an example of what can happen when you communicate incorrectly and you may never know it.

When I began this blogging experiment, I knew there would be those days when I would just vent a bit about my pet peeves.  This is one of them.  I blame my dad.  But I’ve also found out through personal experience, that when I speak and/or write correctly, I am taken more seriously within my profession.  And to help my students, I will continue to drive them crazy, just like my dad to make sure they do the same to help them in whatever profession they choose.  Because it matters.