Stop! Grammar time

Image from Grow or Pay

There is a disturbing new trend lurking on the internet – and it’s got nothing to do with cat videos.

Bad grammar and typos can be excused on platforms like Twitter which are all about speed and brevity. But that cuts no ice with people like @CapsCop and @GrammarCop who are building their own algorithims to flush out tweets with typos, flawed grammar or English. Some offenders get away with an auto-response reprimand but for other a full-blown campaign ensues. Kirstie Alley and John Cusack are just two of the celebrities who have been targeted by this red pen brigade.

Now I love a well placed comma as much as the next person, but if there is going to be a war and I have to choose a side, it’s not going to be the geeky grammar brigade. Whilst good grammar remains totally necessary, we need to flex our attitudes just a little. Increasingly we view the world through social media spaces like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube where speed, humour and creativity rule and where the full stop is often dumped as an unnecessary character taking up vital space. It’s conceivable this will start to spill over to mainstream writing soon.

Having good grammar is vital when you make your living out of explaining ideas, which is what we do at Velvet. However Penelope Trunk, dubbed the world’s most influential guidance counsellor, actually thinks having good grammar can harm your career because she believes in today’s society time would be better spent learning other, more important skills. She claims that the overall message in what one says is what counts and that we should stop worrying about the details of how we say it.

I’m not saying we should all starting burning semi colons and live in some sort of grammar-free utopia but what I am saying is that maybe Trunk is partly right in urging us to move with the times, and that there are more important things to get excited about than flaming people who get their grammar wrong on Twitter.