Grammar Nerve

People are basically stupid.  That is the thesis of today’s musing.  You want me to elaborate, you say?  Consider the state of language in today’s society.  Thanks to technology, more people are communicating through writing than ever before.  Text messages and emails are more common than phone calls now, according to a survey that I just imagined in my own head.  You would think that all this writing would help people learn to spell, or at least to form a proper sentence once in a while.  Wrong.  It’s had the opposite effect, in my observation.

I am the furthest thing imaginable from an English teacher.  I am at the whole opposite end of the spectrum—a Marine.  The term knuckle-dragger is sometimes tossed around to describe us.  Contrary to this popular belief however, we jarhead officers are an educated bunch.  Do not let my ability to do pull-ups cause you to underestimate my mental prowess.  The Marine Corps has seen fit to put me in an educational environment on a few occasions, both as the teacher and as the student.  I’ve spent better than four and a half years in college-level academia while on active duty.  During that time I have been exposed to the writings of a number of college-educated, professional men and women from all sorts of backgrounds.  And at this particular moment in my illustrious career, I am actually grading papers written by these great individuals.  Unfortunately, I am not all that impressed.  These people are not immigrant farm hands that I pulled off a turnip truck and asked to write a research paper.  These are the cream of the crop of the American citizenry.  These officers are our hope for the future.  If their grasp of the English language is to be our metric, I can tell you that I am a little afraid for our future.

I get it, I really do.  The early days of text messaging on phones was a little unwieldy, so by necessity people found ways to shorten some phrases.  But in the time of full keyboards and “smart” phones, it’s time to dump this crap.  When I see an email or letter with LOL, ROFL, TTYL, LMAO, or some other such nonsense in it, the first thing that comes to my mind is “R U freaking retarded?”  Those aren’t my real beef though.  Don’t misunderstand—I hate them and refuse to use them, but I at least understand their origins and purpose.  The thing that really gets on my grammar nerve is when people confuse words.  If you can’t differentiate between “their, they’re, and there,” or “your and you’re,” or “to, too, and two,” in your writing, then I am going to assume you’re an idiot and will probably disregard your opinion on all subjects.  I actually actively search for these kinds of things when I read something.  I consider these things a sort of barometer of the author's intellect—“dumbass indicator" is the term I use. 

I’m not unreasonable.  I allow room for typos, for self-correct on phones, stuff like that.  I’m talking about on official papers, documents, signs, and things of that sort.  I will forgive a few comma splices, maybe some use of the passive voice.  If you write “your a looser” on your Facebook page, you are still a retard, though.  Make that "you're still a retard."