[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

Oh, and "qwerty" is now a word?? Wonder when that happened?

I don't know when it was first adopted, but Webster's has it down to 1929. So it's been around for a while.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

I seriously doubt that you understand more about the English language and language in general than I do. Considering that I make my living (and a very good living it is too) finding and making use of sloppy use of the English language by people like you.

Being able to use the English language for work and knowing something about it are not necessarily the same thing. Plenty of people who use computers for their work have no idea how their computers actually work outside of the software packages they run. I assume you're competent at your job by virtue of the fact that you still have it, but that by itself isn't terribly meaningful.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

No, I didn't absorb my knowledge by osmosis. I actually went to university and 8 years of three graduate schools, for each of which I graduated in the top 2% of my class.

Fair enough.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

Oh, and "thru" is acceptable use in government documents and several other forms of "formal writing."

Interesting.

Doing a brief Google search, I noted 2,340,000 of 449,000,000 sites using the word "thru", which works out to .4%. Looking for PDF or DOC government files, I noted 7,170 with "thru", as opposed to 214,000 overall. That's 3% (which is certainly better than .4%, obviously), but paling in comparison to those which used "through" (117,000, or 54%).

Assuming that the "thru" spelling in the documents isn't an error, it would appear you are correct, although if I had to submit a government document for publication, and wanted to be on safe ground, I would certainly use "through", since that looks to be much more common (and therefore, understandable) to the target audience.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

Apparently you haven't learned anything much from your girlfriend, by osmosis or otherwise.

You assume (wrongly) that she teaches a) me, and b) English. Neither one of these assumptions is true. She simply reads and writes English properly. In fact, she and I have frequent disagreements, precisely because I'm more hostile to proper English than I am to common usage English, in most cases. What would be considered "proper" English grammar is frequently much less articulate sounding than "common usage" English, (e.g., "It's me", rather than "It's I"). I can understand why you thought she teaches English, though. I should've been more explicit, I suppose.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

As for illiteracy, it's still only a situational construct, and whether the English language is evolving or de-evolving is only your opinion, to which I will be more likely to give some credence when I know exactly where all your advanced degrees lie. You must have scores of those, correct?? All summa cum laude?? Or at least cum laude??

Summa cum laude in English (undergrad), and a Masters in Library Science. I don't actually remember my GPA there.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

No, let me guess .... C student?? How were your SATs?? You probably have them framed on your wall right?? No??

Not at all. I wasn't very proud of my SATs. My math score actually brought me down. If I remember right, my SAT was 1260 or so. Not great, but good enough for a scholarship.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

And, just out of curiosity ... at which university does your girlfriend teach? Must be a great place if the graduate students are illiterate.

That, I'd rather not get into, for obvious reasons. My only point was that the literacy level is going down generally. Some of her students write well. Others, as I said, are basically incapable of writing a decent sentence. Regardless of admissions standards, the fact that students graduate from any high school and any undergraduate program with these writing deficiencies is the problem.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

Ah, but then, I only attended UCLA (undergraduate and graduate), USC (graduate), Loyola University (graduate) and Trinity College at Cambridge (graduate). Much less prestigious than your girlfriend's university, I'm sure.

I'm very happy for you...I suppose. The point isn't the prestige of the university, though. Rather, the point is that such students would graduate from an undergraduate program at all.

At any rate, with such an extensive education, and with a job that involves communication, I would think you would recognize that it is not an evolution of the language when students can't tell the difference between formal and informal language after having graduated from high school and undergraduate studies (regardless of whether they went to Yale University or a clown college). Part of writing is understanding your audience and tailoring your language to them. The fact that students are increasingly unable to do this is, I submit, a sign of increasing illiteracy.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

SOS .... not a word, and seldom spelled "S.O.S." anymore.

True enough. So why did you bring it up? As I said originally, it's not a word, so it didn't really have a place in the conversation.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

Then, neither is C U L8R. And, then there's IOU which has been in use for a long time. Not an initialism, not a word ... just a shorthand expression that people use all the time, even in formal writing, and without being termed illiterate by the likes of you.

Actually, I don't have any issue with "IOU". Is there some reason I should?

My point is not to say that all shorthand, initialisms, acronyms, etc., are bad and contribute to illiteracy, in and of themselves. My point is that texting, in particular, contributes to illiteracy, because it takes words and destroys their meanings (particularly for homonyms). It doesn't matter what the spacing is (cul8r or c u l8r, for example). The point is that if you write "c", you not only destroy spelling of the word, but by destroying the spelling, you destroy the meaning of the word. It would be no different than spelling "you're" as "your", or, as is done in texting now, "yur" (which destroys both meanings). Another example: "cya". That can either mean "see ya" or "cover your ass". "IOU" and "SOS" are benign because they have specific, explicit meanings. Texting, partially because it's purely phonetic, does not.

The whole point to spelling being important is that different spellings can represent different words. Language becomes a huge tangle if we discard rules of spelling and just spell everything phonetically, which is what texting attempts to do.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

No, I don't find your ability to read or write "properly" offensive. I just find you offensive.

I did not enter this thread to offend anyone, obviously, but since you went out of your way to personally antagonize me, I see no reason to be silent about it.