At first, I thought it was just a typo. A soccer coach, in a hurry, rushing to provide me information on his team, had hit the wrong key. Even if he had written "scedual" instead of schedule, it had to be a mistake.
Or was it? The coach went on to continually discuss his team's challenging "scedual" and convinced me not only that his team was in for a tough season but that also their coach can't spell.
What a fine product of his school department, I thought.
Frankly, it really isn't surprising. What I see done to the English language on a daily basis is usually shocking, if not appalling. Either people never learned how to spell, are too lazy to do it properly or just don't care. Whatever the case, they don't look too smart in the process. And it seems as though it bothers only me.
Now, as a disclaimer, I should state that I may be particularly over-sensitive to this issue. I'm a writer. Part of my job is to spell things correctly. Most of the time, I actually do - or at least come close. Therefore, I'm also fairly trained to find spelling errors and poor grammar. So, on most occasions, if you spell something wrong, I'm going to notice. Sorry. It's an occupational hazard.
Now I certainly understand that people are going to have typos. We all do. And not everyone spends the kind of time at a keyboard that I do. Therefore, most people aren't as proficient at typing as somebody in my line of work.
Still, some of the spelling and grammatical mistakes I see go way beyond hitting the wrong keys.
Between reading message boards online or perusing Facebook, the mistakes I find just make my jaw drop. I saw a post the other day by a Facebook friend that had seven words spelled wrong. I saw another one just posted this evening that had three in a span of five words wrong.
What really gets me is that quite often, I see posts like these that are posted by teachers. Coaches and parents don't do much better.
We got an email the other day from a school athletic director informing us of a bit of news. I don't think he actually spelled any words wrong, for a change, but his sentence structure and grammar was pretty abysmal.
First, it makes me wonder who taught these people their grammar. Then I wonder how much worse is this problem going to get when one generation passes along such apathy to its children.
I'd be mortified if I posted something publicly or sent an email that was filled with such errors. I'd be embarrassed and very unhappy that I was representing myself in such a way. I'm not an illiterate nitwit, and I'd prefer not to give people reason to think I am.
Yet, it seems much of the world is either too lazy or could care less that they are displaying such a lack of basic grammar skills. If I am a college graduate and a professional, which I am, I'd prefer my actions and public communications be on par with my education level instead of giving the impression that I flunked out of the sixth grade and never went back.
I think in this world where we communicate in clipped words and phrases and via texts and emails this was bound to happen. We're in an age of instant gratification. People spout off opinions and post them for the world to see at a moment's notice. They say what they want without regard to how they see it or how bad their oral or written skills are. In the cyber world, such skills don't matter any longer. Heck, sometimes their opinions are as hollow and their arguments are as flawed as their spelling, but it makes no difference. It is freedom of speech run amok.
That's too bad. The erosion of such skills is sad but what is worse is that people no longer care that they represent themselves in such a way. When people are too lazy or too apathetic to strive to be their best, it is a sorry world we have created for ourselves.
I used to look at all the crazy spellings of names that I see and roll my eyes at the parent's who, in an effort to be different or creative, came up with the unique name. Now I just wonder if it wasn't a case of being creative but a lack of spelling skills.
But, at least I know, that if I spell any of those names wrong in the paper, they'll care and I'll probably hear about it.
