The first post perfectly encapsulates how clear writing is orthogonal to historical traditions. I genuinely can’t tell whether that’s its satirical point, or whether the OP lacks a sense of its own irony. Which, on a meta level, reinforces the satire :).
Eggsactly what I was thinking.
First we ban purple prose.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL for Argentina!
Frodo wins the thread on the first reply, ladies and gentlemen! What a game!
Language is descriptive, not prescriptive. Deal with it.
If I may offer a word of advice, your writing isn’t very good, so you may wish to remove the plank from your own eye before pointing out the speck in your brother’s.
This is a pretentious brain on Adderall. Any Questions?
Although some maintain a crusty towel hidden under the bed, I have been told others rely on an athletic sock, which is then laundered. For more informal settings, a few kleenex will do, as with a sneeze.
I’m sort of enjoying the idea that 19th-century spelling reforms are somehow responsible for the dumbing-down of Hollywood.
Where are the slithy toves?
Is the OP supposed to be in English? Because I keep trying to parse it and failing…
Good one! Because here’s the point. Sure, the OP is satire, even if it wasn’t intended to be. Yes, every reply here critical of the OP is indisputably correct. No one has written more eloquently in defense of descriptivism than Steven Pinker, yet even Pinker acknowledges that some things deserve correction, because in any given time and place, there really is such a thing as “wrong”.
I hasten to add that the good folks at the Oxford English Dictionary recently informed us that “scrumdiddlyumptious” is now officially an English word. So are “YOLO” and “squee”.
Thus, you may now feel free to write a letter like the following:
Dear Sir:
I note with interest that you are seeking a Director of Marketing for your North American operations. I just about squeed when I read the description of this scrumdiddlyumptious job, and I says to myself, you know, you should apply for this, because, like, YOLO, you know? It’s, like, for all intensive purposes the best job ever. My resume is attached.
Love,
(your name here)
I’ve hidden a brace of ravenous miniature weasels in a random pair of your undergarments for using that word…
As much as the pretension in the OP makes me want to drive a croquet mallet sideways up a random personal orifice of their choice, things like this irk me, but at least I can get a laugh out of some of them.
“Wrong” is, ironically, the wrong word to use here. Rather, I should say it is an imprecise and misleading word to use.
Certainly “scrumdiddlyumptious” is a poor word choice for most cover letters. But if you’re applying as director of marketing for the Scholastic Book Fair, an adroit use of the word might be exactly the right thing to do.
Similarly, the word “delectable” is by any measure a correct description of a food you enjoy. If Dr. Seuss used the word in the last line of “Green Eggs and Ham,” it would have been a poor word choice.
There are absolutely circumstances under which adopting a certain register is wise or unwise. I would never use the word “YOLO” in a grant proposal. Okay, I would never use that word anyway, because I’m an old fart. It would be such an unwise choice that characterizing it as “wrong” would be, while technically inaccurate, a reasonable approximation of its unwisitudinosity. On the other hand, were I explaining how government works to a classroom of kids who don’t know what state they live in, if I start off by using words like “statute” and “zoning ordinance” and “prohibit” and “jurisdiction,” my word choice is every bit as unwise.
It’s the most unique language on Earth!
“It’s an entirely different issue to undermine the fundamentals of a language just to cosset the plebeian masses, who seemingly cannot fashion the neural pathways required to remember a few, facile spelling rules.”
I feel like I’ve heard this before, from practically every high school English teacher I ever had to endure. They seemingly cannot fashion the neural pathways required to remember a few, facile variations of the words us common folk use. God, high school English made me hate my own language.
Perhaps, but it seems like a reasonable way to describe something that needs to be corrected. You may prefer a different descriptor, and that’s fine. The real point, however you prefer to describe it, is that some usages are worth trying to change, rather than just accepting them because the usage itself is deemed to be its own justification.
But you were free to write that before, too. If you want to write a cover letter with the line “i could care less about ignant stuf your gonna give me a JOB” you could do that. It was up to the reader to determine whether they wanted to lend your incoherent, stupid prose any weight.
The OP uses correct spelling and grammar but his writing is dreadful; it takes far too long for him to express his ideas, repeatedly uses words that are much better replaced by more common and shorter words, and he doesn’t seem to grasp the different between spelling mistakes, spelling variations, and weirdly incorrect euphemisms. So while he makes no grammatical mistakes, a reasonably informed reader would dismiss it.
The purpose of language is to communicate. Poor grammar can get in the way of that, but so too can intellectual masturbation, overuse of jargon, poorly constructed arguments, the use of technically correct but poorly chosen words, or a dozen or more other mistakes. A person who wants to be a professional does need to learn proper business writing, which is pretty close to proper academic writing. “D00d lets make this happen cuz YOLO” is not good business writing. Neither is the OP.
Word. As the philosopher André Young would say.
(and BTW, Frenchie here. The dear old *Académie *ponders, we humour and ignore.)