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Once again, it’s time to play the game where I pretend I have about 67,345.9 readers that actually send me important questions and hope that I will use my superior intellect to answer them. Today’s question comes from Roland Thumpleganger of Unicorn, PA (that’s a real city. The ZIP code is 17563. I am not making it up).

Roland asks, "If memory serves, you are an aspiring writer with hopes and ambitions of one day becoming a published author.  I understand that you are also an important instructor at your local community college and find yourself in a position that allows you to warp mold young minds into the Information Technology professionals of tomorrow.  Both of these professions put you in a position to receive numorous written works from students and others in your community.  You have recently started actually downgrading your students’ assignments because of poor grammar and spelling, including what has become known fondly as ‘leetspeak’.  Is this because you find poorly written works loathsome and unworthy of your attention?  Os is it simply because you hate teenagers?"

Yes, Roland, that is true.  Of course I hate teenagers (just kidding)(not really), but I hate writing that throws all manner of grammar and spelling rules to the wind even more.  And perhaps it’s a bit harsh to say that I find such writing loathsome and unworthy, but like anytime that I find it difficult to to come up with other words, I don’t care.  The problem isn’t just from the teenage crowd, either.  I have seen this terrible lack of decent writing coming from even well-seasoned adults who should know much better.  For example, here is an exact replica of an e-mail that I received from a student in her thirties, who shall remain nameless in this blog post because she does not want me to tell you her name is Linda.

"Ok I was going to ask in class but everyone was standing there so I had my book for XXXXX but my lovely other half works construction with the new housing developments and since we know thats been down he’s been laid off for 3 weeks,  so I had to take my book back so I could pay a bill, now next week I’ll have plenty of money to rebuy it but thats when everything is due. I know you’ve let me use your book in class but I was wondering if maybe this week or weekend you would let me again but actaully make copies of the turtorials so I can finish it up this weekend unless you trust me to use it this weekend and return it on MOnday if you have class I’m sure most students dont ask you this but I am different I know not to be confused with weird."

So you see my point, now?  This is a perfect example of the kind of e-mails I receive regularly from my students.  I mean, look at that!  Not even a single mention that Confused With Weird would be an excellent name for a rock band album.

I think we can all say that there are topics in this world that we happen to be good at, but don’t necessarily find those topics of particular interest nor do we work to excel at them.  We just happen to be good at them.  For me, English was one of those topics.  There are times in my life when I wonder if I should have been an English major (it most likely would have led to a more prolific career in publishing).  So when I come across written works like this, I find myself cringing just reading it.  I also find that I have to catch my breath a lot.  It’s just plain difficult to read, and it makes the writer look like their brains are made of pigeon phlegm.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the creative use of the English language.  Coming up with amusing word usements is almost a hobby of mine, and I take special note of particularly imaginitive works when I hear them.  For example, recently a coworker inadvertently made up the word "teleworketing" as a term to describe telecommuting.  I thought this was fantastical.  Another example is from one of my favorite authors, Dave Barry, who coined the term "the behindular zone.", referring of course, to Congress one’s backside.  The world is replete with excellent verbage, but this leetspeak stuff just isn’t in that category.

Of course, I blame global warming for all of this.  I’m sure there’s a connection.  They’ve managed to connect just about everything else that’s wrong with this world to global thermalization, so why not this too?  It’s either that, or we have an entire generation of kids who have grown up with text messaging that somehow believe the rest of the world works that way.  If they made it to college writing this way, what were their previous English teachers doing?  So it’s either global warming or a bad educational system.  Surely it can’t be the latter, right?

-Brian