The death of grammer. The fall of syntax. The plight of punctuation.
Same old story. All hail the mighty, modern digital age. The argument stands that while we have more access to information then ever, we are getting dumber by the dozen.
Here are my most common observation’s:
Random Capitalizaton. At the Eagle, it always astounds me how much of this we see. It comes in the form of letters to the editor, press release’s from public relations personnel and even freelance Writers and Columnists.
It seems to me that people randomly Capitalize whenever they feel the select word at hand is important to them, which is actually grammatically incorrect. Take note, that this is more affectively done with the use of an italicized word.
‘Mayor Ivan Brooker’ at the start of a sentence or written in it’s entirety would be correct. The ‘mayor’ (where ‘Ivan Brooker’ doesn’t follow suit) would not be correct. He may be important to us, but he is not necessarily the ‘mayor’ to end all Mayors the world over (sorry Ivan).
Continue to capitalize all proper names, places (Cochrane) and regions (Western Canada), the start of all sentences, all former title’s (Mrs. or Corp.), salutations (Dear or To Whom It May Concern), titles of books, movies and songs (often inserted into quotation marks or italicized) and a few other instances that one could always reference with the Canadian Press Stylebook (the bible for Canadian writers).
While some other reference books may conflict with CP style (thank you, english language) kindly refrain from glareing errors such as randomly capitalizing actions or items mid-sentence.
The confusion over the Apostrophe. I’m seeing this on billboards and in newspaper ad’s. As a general rule of thumb: an apostrophe is used to show possession (Lindsay’s column) and contractions (don’t, didn’t, isn’t).
‘It’ can’t own anything. If there’s an apostrophe between the ‘it’ and the ‘s’ and you can’t break it down to ‘it is’, its wrong. When showing plural possession, take note of the –iz sound (the Larsens’ house versus when a name ends in an ‘s’ – such as ‘Chris’s).
Let us not forget ‘there’. Or ‘they’re’. Or ‘their’. How about ‘your’ or ‘you’re’? ‘Were’ or ‘we’re’? Hey folks, it may seem like Grade 4 but its ground zero. And I won’t even start with ‘that’ or ‘which’ or ‘who’. Never mind commas, colons and semicolons.
I could go on and on, but partly for the sake of brevity and partly because if you have been paying attention your probably frothing at the mouth over the extent of punctuation and spelling mistakes, my time with you has come to an end.
Its time for me to close with only one parting gift for you: the first person to call (403-932-6588) or email me ([email protected]) with the correct number of punctuation, spelling and capitalization mistakes noted in this column will win a free appetizer at local Olive’R Twist, courtesy of the mighty Eagle.
Punctuation, spelling and random capitalization only. Grammar and sentence structure are not included in the hunt. Anything in ‘single’ quotation marks should be considered correct for the sake of this.
Join me in my next column: the ridiculous world of text and compu-speak abbreviations.
