Embracing the language of letting go

OF ALL the things I should give up, or at least cut back on, the correct usage of language has never been among the top contenders. Yet it seems my commitment to precision, commas, capitals and full stops has faded.

In times past, I would write impassioned pleas for the preservation of the apostrophe.

It wasn’t just punctuation. My eyes scanned every Its/It’s for signs of trouble. I frowned at the misuse of their/there, your/you’re and that/ who.

“Alot” ended friendships.

But something has shifted. Maybe it’s all the song lyrics and their casual contempt for rules. Maybe it’s all the everyday errors which no one tuttuts anymore.

When Barbara, a reader, rightly pointed out the other day that I had written “less” instead of “fewer”, I did not writhe in apoplectic shame.

Call it osmosis. But it seems my inner fight for language perfectionism has ebbed.

Remember when elbows were not to rest on dining tables or, more recently, the calling out of people as rude if they used their phone while eating out?

Such niceties sound so quaint now. Language, too, is always evolving, and perhaps I have belatedly caught up with the prevailing disregard for written exactness. I no longer notice a full colon where a semi colon belongs: indeed, it seems few do, and that there will be no letters (except from Barbara) about the literary atrocity in this sentence.

Kids send messages without any attempt at complying with rules. To call them out is to bore them.

Dozens of work-related notes and emails arrive each day without a capital letter at the start of the sentence or a full stop at the end.

Some begin with “hiya” and “heya”, and I no longer stop to judge the presumptive familiarity from someone I don’t really know. “Yo”, however, along with “Bro”, “Boss” and “Chief”, will always rile. Then again, acquiescence demands less energy than the once reflexive ire for lame Americanisations.

Yes, we have shaken off the guard rails of the written word. With apologies to all the Barbaras, this brings some comforts. In surrendering – to a point – I can at last enjoy Gotye’s great song, Somebody That I Used To Know, without imagining a big, red pen.

Still, spelling matters. Bad spelling inspires snobbish judgments that cannot be set aside. I won’t ever give up the need for words as sets of letters composed in the right order and fullest form. Nvr.