I have a hunch that this is due in large part to my father’s attention to detail in our use of the english language, but reading professional memos and publications with the errors below makes it difficult for me to have a tremendous amount of confidence in the people who author them. I’ve also noticed that recently, an increasing number of my peers are making the same errors or reverting to IM-speak in environments where informal communication is not appropriate. This makes me wonder whether this is just a failure of society in general to place value in the language, or is it a failure of the education system to do the same? By adopting an attitude of “we each speak our own version of english, and that’s okay” the schools remove any accountability of the students to learn what is correct and what is not. Anyhow, here’s the list off the top of my head. I’ll probably add more as I think of them.
- your and you’re – This is by far the worst offense!
- where, were, and wear
- weather and whether
- to, too, and two
- Prefacing each memo with “Be advise”, instead of “Be advised”, which isn’t actually needed either, since the purpose of the memo is in fact to advise me of whatever follows.
