Are linguistic pedant loosing the battle?

By Madibeng Kgwete: posted 15 May 2009

I have to admit, after a few recent experiences, that so-called linguistic pedants (people who are strict with language and punctuation) are fighting a losing battle.

I thought it was just local pedants facing defeat, but now it turns out that even their British counterparts (first-language English speakers) are not yielding positive results.

I had an English teacher who would circle every little grammatical and punctuation error; and, soon, I got used to reading and re-reading my documents before sending to the next person. Even with an SMS, I have to read it at least three times before sending – just to make sure that there are no errors.

But, to some of my friends, this obsession with grammar and punctuation is irrelevant to them. As long as the message is clear, they say, everything else is unimportant. Which is why they continue to write me emails informing me of “house’s” and “car’s” for sale.

The British newspaper, The Telegraph, recently carried an article in which it was revealed that a study of CV blunders has found, for example, someone who wrote in a CV that he was “responsible for fraudulent claims” and another who is “highly adept at multi-tasting”.

I also have a picture (in my cellphone) of a large board in a certain liquor store warning: “Anyone under the age of 18 is not aloud”.

Sometimes, just putting a punctuation mark at the wrong place or not having it at all in a sentence may have you say things you didn’t intend saying. For example (courtesy of The Telegraph): “My interests include cooking dogs”.

In South Africa, where the majority of us are second- and third-language English speakers, some of these grammatical errors are understandable, but why would the British also join the assault on their own language?

In this era of SMSs and short-hand speech, we have become accustomed to “C u later”, “4 sure”, "cum c me 2moro", "2nite".

Although spellcheckers make it inexcusable to have spelling mistakes, these modern devises also have limitations. For example, a spellchecker will not correct you when you write “loose” instead of “lose”, “quite” instead of “quiet”, “its” instead of “it’s”.

Although some errors are permissible, applying for a job in the corporate communications industry and saying, as one of your skills, that you have “excellent poof-reading skills” puts you in a really high risk of being disqualified.

The question now is: should linguistic pedants put their red marking pens down and admit that language evolves – or what should they do? Maybe its time to admit that a linguistic pedant are loosing the battle!