Two things are destroying the English language.
They're happening online, and you may be guilty of generating or tolerating them both. I'm talking about typos and spam.
You shouldn't have to be told not to commit typos in your posts or comments -- or to permit spam to attach itself to your blog. If you just exercise a little common sense, you'd come to that conclusion. Typos and spam should not be permitted to gain an insidious foothold on our communication system.
Yet many people do just that.
They let language corruption thrive, by contributing to its generation, multiplication and dissemination.
They let typos enter the internet and they don't care what example they're setting for youngsters, immigrants, illiterates, or people trying to learn English as a second language. By letting your typo dangle in the wind, it becomes a flag of semantic degeneracy. An exegetical nonsensicality. Sentence content defilement. Hermeneutic nuisance. A non-extrapulatory excursion into disconnection.
Sentences convey meaning and sentences are composed of individual words. Words that must be spelled and used correctly.
They also fail to put reader comments into moderation, a tool that prevents spam from automatically getting published on a blog.
You don't need a captcha (word recognition device that separates spambots from humans), unless you're flooded with comment spam and don't want to have to delete hundreds of spam comments every day. Captchas are often hard for humans to decipher, what with all those wobbly letters and visual noise and jumbling.
Use comment moderation instead. That puts you in complete control of the content, your own and user-generated, that's presented on your blog. Make people wait to see their comment appear; let them experience eventual gratification, rather than instant. It won't hurt them.
Spam and typos exhibit a wanton disregard for decency and order in human information exchange. They must be stopped.
Let's take a look at how typos and spam are corrupting and permanently changing the English language.
Typos Attack Spelling
Typos are when you put sloppy text online, in Twitter or your own blog or a comment on someone else's blog.
Many years ago, I read that typos are mandatory online and in email. Why? Because typos are evidence that you're a busy, therefore important, multi-tasking, pro-active person.
You doesn't have time to be bothered with correcting a fat finger mistake.
I disagree.
There is never any reason to let mangled text flood the web.
What's the matter with you anyway?
Do you not care about communication, accuracy, meaning?
Are you in such a big hurry, you can't spare a moment to keep the lines of communication free from contaminants?
Are you secretly happy to wreck the language? You never won any spelling bee championships, can'y keep a dictionary at hand, don't know how to use spell check -- and you just read comic books anyway?
I mean, language does so much work for us, accepting our diversity and adversity with not a whimper, yet we treat it like a red-haired stepchild with a faulty license plate. Or a can of worms that crawls hideously across the richocheting rockets and creaking chasms of relationships, bearing our ill-begotten fears and fights?
Language has been instrumental in all our success, and failure, and do we then treat it like a sideshow, a worthless freak, a tool we use nonchalantly, willy-nilly, with no concern about its own well-being?
You think I have so much free time on my hands that I can spend time analyzing your typo to try to decipher what you were trying to say? I can't play guessing games with you. I have too much work to do. I can't be juggling everybody's letters around and doing mental
΄sɓuıךʍɐɹɔs pǝךɓuɐʇ ɹnoʎ ǝךqɯɐɹɔsun oʇ sdıךɟʞɔɐq ɓuıop
Zero tolerance fo typos, I say. If you can't espresso your sylph without errors, plz remain silent .
Typos are rude. Typos are selfish. Typos are negligent, unprofessional, and stupid.
Typos are saying this to your readers:
"I'm too smug and self-sastisfied to worry about you struggling to understand what I post online. Figure it out. Substitute one letter for another. Insert omitted letters. Read between the consonants. In time, you'll understand what I was trying to say. I'm all wired from energy drinks and candy. I have much more to say, and so many places to say it. Obviously, I can't waste a single moment correcting a silly littel typo. It's like a white lie. Small. Insignificant. Deal with it."
Every time you let a typo slip out online, you're perverting the English language, falsifying it, disrespecting it, abusing it and yoru readers. You're hurting the language, disgracing it, diminishing it, smashing it to shreds, and ripping it apart.
Spam Attacks Logic, Rhetoric, and Relevance
It seems that about 90% of the time, spam is delivered online in mangled syntax, bad grammar, poor word choice, tangential irrelevance, broken punctuation, and incorrect spellings.
In other words, spam is nonsensical. It talks about things that have nothing to do with your blog. Spam runs off on tangents that generally loop around to the product the spammer is misguidedly trying to sell.
Here are four examples of spam in my comment moderation for this blog today, which I deleted.
SPAM EXAMPLE #1
Hello All. After lurking around pluperfecter.blogspot.com for a while and enjoying the site from the background I have decided to join up!...There seems to be some really good member in here and I like very much [URL]
SPAM EXAMPLE #2
Am new here, got to this site by searching G and truly like it here, will enjoy my stay for sure P.S. if somebody is also interested in watch free movies online you can see my Sig.
SPAM EXAMPLE #3
If you want talk with me than take a look at [deleted] i don't know yet. I think it's [deleted] This is mandy from all my movies and here is my invitation to you to take a look at [deleted]
SPAM EXAMPLE #4
Get Genuine Ways To Earn Money Online With Payment Proofs. You Can Learn How To Make Money With Traffic Improvement Tips and make $100 every day. So That You Don't Waste Your Time And Money.for details click here [deleted]
Although I know these comments were spawned by evil spambot programs, and not manually deposited by human agents, I shall respond to them anyway.
My response to the spam messages:
(1) There's nothing to "join" or sign up for.
(2) I don't watch movies online or anywhere else, as I hate Hollywood. I'm a book reader and a music lover. No time for films, except for the occasional avant garde experimental flick over at Ubu Web.
(3) I'm very married and don't need to "take a look" at you, your "movies", or anything else of yours.
(4) What the heck are "payment proofs"? My proof I got paid is cash in fist, money in my pocket, and whistling a rickety sea shanty I trot off to the store to buy a bunch of junk I don't need. I'm not interested in giving you money online so you can show me how to make other people give me money online, or any other scams, sorry.
Now that you've seen how typos and spam are disrupting and mutating the English language, promise yourself and the internet that you'll cease and desist from adding to the cesspool of semiotic decay.
Thank you.
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