Grammar

[osbjmg]

I am not sure when this started happening, but I am noticing a lot of grammatical laziness these days. The gratuitous apostrophe is rampant. you're/your and they're/their seem to be hopelessly intertwined, and shortcut words make you sound like a 13 year-old

Comments

[lem]

I could not agree more, JG. Unfortunately, I think it's part of a larger breakdown of the English language among teens and twenty-somethings. There are two other things that should be mentioned: spell check and proper capitalization. Sending an e-mail in all lower-case characters is just as offensive as typing in all capitals. Spelling errors make people look dumb.

In the end it is all about self-respect! Using spell check, appropriately capitalizing ("I" among other letters), and putting those apostrophes in the right places says a lot about a person and how much pride they take in not wanting to look like a 13-year old idiot.

[osbjmg]

I actually received an email today which consisted of the following:
?

That's it! How rude; the person apparently meant to say: "Hello John, I have not heard from you in x days, do you have any news for me?" Luckily I can translate this inefficient communication as many people use this method now.

[lem]

Just goes to show that only computers and networks respond well to being "pinged".

As far as e-mail etiquette goes, I hate when people send e-mails where the entire two or three sentences of the messsage is entirely contained in the subject line.