There’s a growing trend in online communications, and I – for one – am not too thrilled. With increased aggression and startling frequency, quotients of the brands on
Facebook are lowering their standards of communication. You know the type. They use words like ginormous and irregardless, both of which have become so pervasive in the American lexicon that they’ve been entered into the ranks of reverence on Dictionary.com (somewhere, another Wordsmith of some repute is rolling over in his grave, but doing it with a wink and a smile). These are the same folks that start every sentence with “Actually”, or “I feel like…” and in the spoken word utter every statement with a sickly sweet sense of mild, bland surprise, and a frequently falling intonation (“Oh, really? No kidding.) They have seemingly no regard for the fact that an exclamation point is meant to do just that – exclaim. If you can’t express the sentiment with language, then using !!!!! as a crutch is not an acceptable workaround.
These grammatical slights are not creative. They are examples of lazy, uncreative people expressing themselves in lazy, uncreative ways. Like telling an old joke over and over again to the same person, what once was impactful for its uniqueness has become ineffectual by way of ubiquity.
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Stand Apart on Facebook – Don’t Pander
There’s a growing trend in online communications, and I – for one – am not too thrilled. With increased aggression and startling frequency, quotients of the brands on
Facebook are lowering their standards of communication. You know the type. They use words like ginormous and irregardless, both of which have become so pervasive in the American lexicon that they’ve been entered into the ranks of reverence on Dictionary.com (somewhere, another Wordsmith of some repute is rolling over in his grave, but doing it with a wink and a smile). These are the same folks that start every sentence with “Actually”, or “I feel like…” and in the spoken word utter every statement with a sickly sweet sense of mild, bland surprise, and a frequently falling intonation (“Oh, really? No kidding.) They have seemingly no regard for the fact that an exclamation point is meant to do just that – exclaim. If you can’t express the sentiment with language, then using !!!!! as a crutch is not an acceptable workaround.
These grammatical slights are not creative. They are examples of lazy, uncreative people expressing themselves in lazy, uncreative ways. Like telling an old joke over and over again to the same person, what once was impactful for its uniqueness has become ineffectual by way of ubiquity.
Continue reading »
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