Month

October 2011

I love grammer, I mean… grammar!

Some people think I’m sick. I love grammar. I like to edit things. I scour for errors. I’m not unlike many of you out there. I cringe when my husband says, “where’s it at?” or I get a newsletter from school that says “Event Tonite!”

I come from a long line of freaky editor types. My grandmother was born in 1901 and was the editor of The Kansan at the University of Kansas in 1920. She also worked on the yearbook, as did my mother. I went to K-State, but was an editor at both the college newspaper and the yearbook. Maybe grammar is in our blood.

“It’s lie, dear,” my grandmother would say when I would say that I was going to go lay down for a nap. Ouch, that’s even hard to type those words now.

In today’s world, young people don’t care about grammar. Yes, they have to for English class. But otherwise there’s no pride. And, I’m not just talking about texting. It’s not just young people. I think because people are consuming media differently, there’s a general lax. Very few of my adult friends subscribe to the newspaper, nor do they read it. So how are they to learn/be reminded of good grammar if they aren’t consistantly consuming quality written media?

One example. I upload my clients’ press releases to an online service on the Kansas City Star’s website. (I’m not sure why I do this because I don’t think anyone reads this site or cares about it, but at least it’s on there.) Anyway, while I’m on the site, I’ll read some of the other press releases. Most are very professional. A few appear to be written by second-graders. I’m shocked by the disregard of the rules of sentence structure, punctuation, spelling and grammar.

There’s been a lot in the media about texting and how it is ruining the youth’s writing skills. I agree. Hopefully most young people can see the difference between a text and true writing.

What scares me is going beyond that. For the past… errrr… I don’t know… 10 years or so… I was one of the few former journalist-turned-something-else who believed the newspaper would never die. I’m over that. I believe in the next five years or so there will be no newspaper in my driveway every morning, and that makes me very sad. I love opening it up. I love spreading it out. I love touching it.

So, here’s my question: will college students study print journalism? Why would they? That won’t even exist. Will every college student who wants to be a “journalistic writer” get a degree in online journalism? Is that writing different? It shouldn’t be. I don’t want online journalism or writing for online in general to be considered so temporary that we can be sloppy.

Some may think they don’t have to really care about grammar or rules because it is just for “online” or just a blog. Some blog writing is atrocious. I suppose that’s OK if a grandma is simply chronicling her soup recipe or a mom is writing about her son’s first year, but there should be a difference between the paid professional who studied for four years to become a… journalistic blog writer?

I would hope that there are college professors meeting right now and developing curriculum for this next generation of writers. I would ask them to please require each student to purchase a printed copy of the AP Stylebook and to READ it cover to cover as I did – twice. Along with many other good books on grammar. These books should be studied and these students should be tested on the rules of grammar.

Finally, for those who uncover good writing online and ferret out some bloggers or online journalists who truly care about the written word – whether it appears on a screen or on a printed page, let’s applaud them… for they may be an endangered species.