Death of the English Language

This is something that has been gnawing on a raw nerve of mine for quite some time.  I understand that none of us are perfect, and we all make mistakes.  I don't expect novice writers like myself to have perfect pieces with perfect spelling and punctuation.  A mistake here and there is expected. However, it does appear that standards in the news industry have hit rock bottom.  It is difficult to read a piece without finding at least one glaring error.  How often have you noticed an error in the ticker across the bottom of the TV screen?  These writers are getting paid to do what they do, and they are representing a corporation.  They make the corporation look bad when they publish a piece with grammar, punctuation, or spelling errors.  There was a day and age that this was unheard of.  In today's fast-paced world, many have sacrificed quality in order to be the first one to get the story out.

The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself. The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post. A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the "youngest" daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their "younger" daughter. In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the "Obama's." This, too, was published, constituting an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy. Moments later, already severely weakened, English died of shame.

Gene Weingarten - Goodbye, cruel words: English. It's dead to me..

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