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C. C. Cedras author, Eden's Fall, Fergus, grammar, punctuation, reading, roadtrip, social media, texting, Writing
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*.gif that really has nothing to do with this post — I just wanted to use it*
The pervasive use of texting and social media has done a great deal of damage to what was once accepted usage in language and the written word. I admit, I’m one of those people who still texts in, more or less, complete sentences and, for the most part, whole word spelling. To be sure, I sprinkle emojis and my bitmoji into my texts and emails, posts on Facebook and Twitter — and here, of course.
While I do not term myself a grammar Nazi¹, I am conscious of most grammar and punctuation rules — I’ve had to be as a lawyer who spent my entire career writing legal documents and contracts that require extreme care so as to avoid ambiguities and outright misconstructions of intent.
I have some pet peeves. You know, the usual suspects: their/they’re/there; your/you’re; tenant/tenet; tack/tact; irregardless; could/couldn’t care less²…
But the one, the one, that drives me NUTS is the abomination of the contraction for could/would/should have (could’ve/would’ve/should’ve) into “could of/would of/should of.”
Last night when wee Fergus and I arrived home after a long road trip that spanned nine days, I was too tired to do much beyond unload the car, feed Fergus and mix an ice cold martini. There I was minding my own business, scrolling through Facebook, when I came to a post by an author I follow. The post was full of typos and rambling, incomplete sentences full of weird word usage, but the worst thing of all was the “could of” plunked down in the middle.
You know what? I can’t read her published work without thinking about this tendency to sloppy writing.
As writers, KR, SA and I have spent a lot of time discussing the platform we are trying to build for ourselves. Social media is, possibly, the most significant plank in that platform, and we take great care in how we present ourselves to our followers and what we post. The last thing we’d want our followers and prospective readers of our books to believe is that we can’t write. For crying out loud.
Rant over.
Sleeping for eight or nine hours in the car while his mom is driving was surely exhausting.
¹ Just ask the editor who’s working on Eden’s Fall about the level of grammar and punctuation mastery she’s finding in our draft manuscript. We are learning/relearning so many arcane grammar rules!
² COULDN’T CARE LESS, dammit.
C C Cedras
K R Brorman
S A Young
7 Comments
May 18, 2017 at 5:30 pm
I have friends who are ex-teachers and I hear this a lot. Personally, I don’t mind inaccuracies in grammar in blogs and emails so much (provided I can still understand what they are saying) because I view them all as quite informal. Also I am not a ‘writer’ – I just write a bit. Big difference. I am aware that my own blog sometimes contains grammatical inaccuracies but I also want my posts to sound like I am talking to friends, rather than writing literary essays ( . . . and I start my sentences a lot with ‘and’. And I pause a lot while I am thinking . . .) 🙂 Having said that I also have issues with ‘professional’ published articles, books or blogs which are badly written and edited, so I get where you are coming from. Honestly, I don’t think you KR, and SA have anything to worry about. But rant away dear friend! A good rant every now and then does a body good.
May 18, 2017 at 6:14 pm
LOL, you’ve been kindly reading this blog for awhile, so you know we can get very casual here. Some of us are aficionados of sentence fragments! I start (too many) sentences with “So.” My goal is to achieve as conversational a style as possible, but I shudder at the prospect that readers cringe or think I’m marginally literate. “Could of,” *shudder*, fingernails on a blackboard for me.
May 21, 2017 at 9:52 am
I have to agree with you about the correct use of grammar and spelling. It is the one thing I will go back to correct in one of my published posts.
However, I do write more casually for my blog than in my actual writing and will start a sentence with And, because I’m ‘speaking’ to you – and who wants to read a ten line sentence? (and I use – a lot too!)
I have never understood ‘could of’ either! I just thought it was an Americanism!
Glad to see you’re safely arrived home again and that the long car trip did not exhaust Fergus! 😀 That ice cold martini sounds perfect! 🙂
May 21, 2017 at 10:08 am
I’m chagrined that “could of” etc. seems to be an Americanism to our non-US friends. No question Americans break a lot of glass linguistically, especially in texting and social media, but this is one that just seems ignorant to me. 😞
May 21, 2017 at 10:59 am
I think all countries have their grammatical problems. Here in SA, because Afrikaans is spoken so much, SA English picks up their mistakes. My pet hate here is that they pronounce the plural of woman as women, not ‘wimen’.
May 21, 2017 at 11:10 am
That is an oddity! 😳
May 21, 2017 at 11:32 am
Yes! Saying it as they read it! 🙂