Webupon

The 21st century is heralding many changes, large and small, across all spectrums. Two of the tiniest examples occur in the field of today’s rapid-fire communication, where getting a message across with speed and brevity has become paramount to accuracy of spelling and grammar. Grammatical perfection has had its day – at least in the quarters where instant communication is all. It’s not simply that our up and coming Lawyers, Doctors, top executives, business owners and entrepreneurs, cannot spell – although surveys are showing that this is a future possibility – it’s more the fact of a desperate need to be in touch, pass on a message, make a point, NOW. Not in two minutes or five but, right here, right now.

Speed of Communication

The age of texting and emailing is here to stay, at least until there are superceded by something even faster.

For many, texting and emailing have proved a liberation, the ancient burden of grammatical correctness dealt with and removed.

The comma, for instance, has lost its mythical aura and the full stop has become a pointless dot. Unhappily for those of us, who love the form and rhythm of perfect grammar, the world has simply gone mad! The beauty and poetry of language, built over thousands of years, has been all but destroyed by mobile phone texting and internet emailing. What remains is a gratingly new form of shorthand.

The Humble Vowel

Take the vowel for example. Using the aforementioned shorthand a person can say what they need to And be easily understood, using a limited number of consonants almost (thankfully not completely) dispensing with the once essential vowel.

To convey by phone text that you will be late, you could simply text something like the following:

`Wl b lat gt dlayd shd b 2 u by 8.’

Admittedly the time it would take to text this message is seconds as opposed to making a voice call, which could be argued may wander in all directions and take up several minutes – or for the more garrulous, like myself, probably much longer. So, cost and time-wise, the text message, despite its assault upon conventional language, stands out as a more effective option.

Punkgramma

What about the current generation’s ability to write clear well-punctuated prose? What’s happening to that?

Recent tests and surveys are already showing a marked decline in general comprehension, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. These surveys are aimed at students as high as university degree level.

It’s not only the young. Even grandparents are jumping on the band wagon in a need to be always and quickly available, taking brave steps into the world of `punkgramma.’

So the question must be asked;`If all and sundry become Punkgrammatiks, who is going to be left to carry the flag of the English language as it once was flown?

Time and Business

Perhaps time is the thing? Today everyone seems to be short of it. Our income-earning activities are so demanding that to get away we often take expensive overseas holidays. We hear it said all the time, ”I have to go overseas to get away or they all expect me to be on call,” “If I just stay home and potter they will always find me,” “The only way I can have a break is to leave the country.”

So with all these expensive holidays – and many have young family to take with them making it an even more costly exercise – comes the need to keep working to pay for them.

Remembering that more and more companies are employing their staff on a commission-only basis, where speed and time-management are critical to making the sale, this creates an added burden. They HAVE to come back and work harder than ever, not only to meet the mortgage and the bills, but to pay for the holiday and all its inevitable add-ons.

Subsequently determined real estate agents, car sales people, keen retailers and professionals, will extract your details from you in whatever way possible and, if they are true to their calling, seeing you as a potential `sale,’ will stay in touch, often by the lesser-intrusive text or email. Anyone serious about making a sale (so they can eat) will be using whatever means are available to ensure you remain their `hot prospect.’ If you have attended an open home, wandered onto a car lot, chatted with a switched-on Harvey Norman/Walmart/Harrod’s sales person, you will have experienced the after-calls and follow-ups.

In fact it has become common practice for businesses and services to jog forgetful minds by text or email reminders to avoid empty time slots. And, never to be outdone, even our politicians are streamlining their own communications along similar lines.

21st century lives are busy, busy, busy. It’s no wonder we don’t stop and think about where the comma should go or the sentence should end. We simply haven’t the time to think about it because to do so might put us behind by a second or two. And heaven forbid that we should worry about such superfluous ciphers as commas and full stops, let alone speech marks and semi-colons.

They will all come back, of course. They have been around too long to be discarded in quite such a casual manner in the worldly pursuit of brevity and speed. Fortunately (well, hopefully), there are still enough pedants and `lovers of the word,’ who will continue to laud the attributes of our wonderful language in all its fullness and wealth and keep it blossoming.

It has to be this way because, without these precious folk, the alternatives are all too ghastly to think about.

Imagine a language where the aahs and oohs, the eeehs and ughs, are replaced with bland colourless mmm’s and grrrr’s, hmmm’s and brmmm’s, fzzz’s and whzzzz’s.

Expedient? Efficient? No-nonsense and practical?

For my part the word, `horrifying,’ comes far quicker to mind.