Journalism 15′
Recently, Kyle Wiens wrote a contemptuous article for the Harvard Business Review blog that crucified grammar offenders entitled, “I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar.”
Wiens wrote, “If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me… If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.”
Wiens’ article raises an important issue permeating the workforce: professionals do not value good grammar. The reason for this trend is that the English language is being disrupted.
Everything in our world is being disrupted due to the progression, growth and innovation of technology. In the past, the 18th century embraced the idea of progress. The 19th century had growth and then innovation, and our era displays disruption as a trend.
With mind-numbing technological improvements, we live in an era of disruptive technology (e.g., smart phones, Internet, and television) that affects human intelligence. As a result, fewer people are respecting the noblest possession of humanity–language.
Language has always been fluid and has evolved to embrace new realities. However, I fear that realities that our young students are facing in this digital world. Thanks to technology, the distinction between informal and formal language has been blurred. People have replaced sophisticated language with jargon and slang.
It is not just that people are forgetting to “cross their Ts and dot their Is,” they are corrupting the native language of Shakespeare and Milton with double negatives and improper use of words. When people are unsatisfied with their diction, they think they can memorize vocabulary from the dictionary, or google a synonym of a simpler word and replace it with a larger one to construct a complex sentence. This not the way to utilize language.
Moreover, smart phones and their smart applications have destroyed intelligence by discouraging digital users from developing and constructing complex thoughts.
People need to read the greats like Faulkner, Hemingway and Melville; and analyze how they use words in their writing in order to improve their own abilities. Memorizing words only to misuse them makes people appear ignorant. Words have meaning, and they are projection of a writer in place of his or her physical presence.
The rise of technology has disrupted our language. And now, as technology advances, human intelligence seems to decrease. After all, we think we have all the answers at our fingertips.
Vivacity to Blog 