It’s very hard not to correct one’s mistakes. Try it while typing. That’s if you type stuff of course.

I recall once in the original blog, I composed an entire post without correcting my typing or spelling errors. I’ll attmept to ecopy it here.

Difficulty eH?

ArrrghhH!

Anyway, getting a grip, I shall contiune. Of course, it doesn’t help that my fingernails are slightlu too long for typing (the just one of the consequences of not hainv g a girlfirend and the moment). Meh, ths is rubbish. I m shattering an illusions here that I’m an impeccable typist.

Ok, back to normal now before this whole thing becomes illegible.

While performing the simplest task such as composing an e-mail, or a blog post, we subconsciously continually correct what we’re doing to produce text that makes sense, that conforms to the rules of grammar and spelling (as best we know how to interpret them) and to show respect for the recipient or intended reader.

Even though there are loads of mistakes in the paragraphs above, the reader can still sort of make sense of what’s going on, they can navigate around the typos and get the gist. With this being the case, why bother with language rules at all? So what if people don’t follow the rules?

What if people make different errors, such that one doesn’t know how to form sentences, another doesn’t know the rules of apostrophes, somebody else is consistently poor at spelling, others communicate in txt spk lol? What becomes of the written language then? It fragments into lots of sublanguages that nobody understands. Nobody would be roflmaoing then, would they?

Or maybe people just wouldn’t give a shit.

Rules and guides are in place in societies to provide a framework for acceptable behaviour. (I’ve not used that particular ‘F’ word since I worked in the NHS *flashbacks to writing bollocks for a living*). People start deviating from the rules and others start to get irked, angry, jealous, vengeful even.

With the final push to Christmas coming, I foresee the manners of many being pushed aside by a few who don’t think that queuing is for them. These people are the equivalent of those who don’t care that plurals don’t have apostrophes, that pens and paper are stationery and c u l8r is just plain fucking lazy.

In keeping with the Christmas spirit, it’s OK to let these people be, forget about them and mount our own moral high horses and proclaim that we’re better than them. But they pushed in and got the last parking space at the supermarket, they filled their trolley with all the bread rolls just in case, they bumped you out of the way in the booze aisle then, with their trolley overflowing, jumped to the till that was just opening when they could see that you only had a few bits.

Is it right that these people should get away with it? Hell no! I’d like to call on all decent folk out there to become intolerant of rule breaking, to amass a virtual army of red pens, striking lines through the poor grammar and spelling that blight our society and putting an end to lazy apostrophe’s. (It really hurt me to do that)