Punished by the Laws of Insanity!

Can you be punished for spelling it right?

What if you send an e-mail to someone very important? A top customer, a prospective employer, a potential business partner or venture capitalist. You take the time to look up various words in the dictionary to be sure they are spelled correctly.

However, the recipient, being a little less well-educated or less diligent than you, reads your e-mail and wrongly decides that you've spelled those words wrong. He deletes your e-mail, vowing never to associate with you again because you, "can't spell!" He moves on, ignorant of his error (and your diligence and care while writing) and you waste a few more contact attempts on the guy, never knowing why he is no longer interested in speaking with you.

Tough situation.

Remember David Howard? He was that guy in Washington, D.C. a few years ago who used the word, "niggardly" and was forced to resign because of it. Someone or several someones got bent out of shape because they thought he was uttering a racial epithet. Much ado was made and some called for his resignation which he eventually gave. Columnist Tony Snow said Howard had been forced to apologize for the ignorance of others.

Painfully true.

Of course, these particular uneducated idiots, by getting all up in arms about it, revealed their own ignorance and broadcast it all over creation. There have been all kinds of remarks made about how Howard, "should have known," that the word could be misconstrued by people who heard it and Howard himself actually apologized for it. Indeed, it's said in such a way as to assume that Howard is the one who was the imbecile for using the term. Kind of like attacking the rape victim for the assault.

Howard lost his job to fools. Maybe he shouldn't have given in but I suppose he didn't want to perpetuate his association with people too stupid to understand a simple word. On the other hand, something else was lost in the process: Ignorance, ineptitude and stupidity were validated as being okay. Ignorance was glorified and intelligence was vilified.

It's the same as the schoolyard bully who harasses the nerd on the playground in third through tenth grades because he got an 'A' in English class. Why is it that excellence is so often downplayed while stupidity is heralded? Ever hear of Outcome Based Education? It ranks (deliberate use of the term) right up there with another rank program called Affirmative Action.

I don't think the internet is to blame for the Howard fiasco, however, it has had a hand in perpetuating ignorance alongside education. Especially when it comes to things like spelling and other word craft. I'm sure many of you have encountered enough spelling and grammar errors in your daily web perusals to make you go half insane. I've even been in the middle of writing some diatribe or other and found myself typing "site" instead of "sight" and vice-versa. Someone I respect and admire once pointed out that I had used "their" when I should have used "they're." Maddening, of course.

For me, the problem is one of having seen the words misspelled so often that I've become acclimated to seeing them written incorrectly. When I see someone else's spelling and grammar errors, I know what the guy meant and castigating him for his goof just isn't a big deal in many cases. Too time consuming at the very least. Either that, or the error is on Yahoo or some other big name news service and who do you contact over there?

What if you send an e-mail to a major supplier overseas and their primary language is not English? I could, at this juncture, make a switch to suggesting that knowing your audience would be wise. If you use big words, long sentences and English slang and jargon, you're just begging for trouble. If your contact doesn't understand English very well and you know it, tone it down for them so you don't force them to go looking everything up in their English/native language dictionary, cursing you all the while!

Granted, we all drop the occasional typo here and there. There are plenty in my blog which I haven't caught. Hopefully, I'll get to them some day. In spite of the potential hypocrisy inherent in writing this little blurb, the fact remains: The language is getting slaughtered out there. And it's killing us.

--Wag--