The immediacy of internet tools such as Twitter and WordPress and the ease with which anyone with time, little or no talent and nothing original to say can write and be published seem to have broken the shackles with which grammar bound the lazy and diffident and the modern reader has neither the taste to appreciate a phrase well done nor the inclination to successfully parse a sentence that contains not an iota of clichéd sentiment.
For words humour the Slo-Man, or as they used to say, “put him in a good humour”. They do not “impact” him, but they do “affect”, not “effect”, him and if your, not “you’re”, sense of English as She is Spoke is anything like the Slo-Man’s, then you’re, not “your”, quite sane and proper and that is a good thing, with a nod to 1066 and All That (look them up – www.wdyl.com – look that up, while you’re, not “your”, at it!)
And yes, The Slo-Man gets it, “languages grow and are living things”. But what is scary is the speed with which it seems to be changing. And in the opinion of the Slo-Man changing for the worse. Twitter with it’s limit on the number of words and texting on phones are probably the biggest contributors to this decline in spelling, manners and grammar. The twits on Twitter have followers, and social success is measured in the number of followers a twit has. So what can one say of a society when everyone is following someone else?
Where are the leaders?