Punctuation and grammar lost today

Cord ImportOctober 7, 20092 mins read

Re: “R.I.P. English,” Sept. 30, 2009

I sat down and picked up a discarded copy of The Cord. That’s when I found it: “R.I.P. English.”
Reading it, I almost instantly found myself silently agreeing to everything in the article. I will admit to having, on occasion, used “words” such as btw in regular speech, but usually just to annoy my brother.

Reading the article, it reminded me of a certain problem which I have fought vehemently for the past couple of years. That problem is that of the lack of use and the misuse of punctuation.

Punctuation is vital. Just today, I was reading an essay for a religion class and struggling to understand it. My struggle wasn’t a result of heavy content, but rather of a lack of punctuation.

Is there any excuse for this grotesque disregard to the English language? But what of the misuse?

One word: emoticons. I remember a time when the semicolon was actually used to divide but join two separate but closely related sentences; not just to wink at someone.

I remember when brackets were used to enclose side notes (and not just to make happy and sad faces).

And I remember lamenting over the slow death of the hyphen. People are becoming increasingly ignorant. I like to think of our language as a ship. Poor English, a beautiful ship sailing on the sea. We must patch up these holes and save the ship before it’s too late.