Why, Gmail? Why?

The de-capitalisation of “inbox” was surely the result of 146 focus groups and a thousand hours of usability testing

And why does such a minor change make me want to kill people? Why?

Oh, Kevin!

An apostrophe shitstorm

Maybe Rudd should give his employee’s a punctuation lesson.

Breaking news from the trenches in the war against illiteracy:

Monash University will teach its first-year students grammar and punctuation after discovering that most lack basic English skills.

Baden Eunson, lecturer at the university’s School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, and convenor of the new course, said about 90 per cent of his first-year students could not identify a noun. “If you ask them to identify adjectives and other parts of a sentence, only about 1 per cent can manage,” he said.

His comments come after Monash colleague Caron Dann said the majority of her 500 students in communication were strangers to English grammar.

“Marking essays, I discovered the majority had no idea how to use apostrophes, or any other punctuation for that matter; That random spelling was in and sentence construction out. About half thought plurals were formed by adding an apostrophe-s, as in apple’s and banana’s.

“Marking the final exam, it emerged that few could write neatly: From bold childlike printing to spidery scribblings in upper case, it is obvious that handwriting is a dying art,” she said.

There’s a million theories why this is but my preferred thesis is the abrogation of responsibility, which usually starts with “It’s not important…” and finishes with “Someone else can fix it”. Unfortunately I cop this all the time because I’m usually the one who’ll send your copy back with a gazillion alert flags and a  comment saying “Fix the spelling and grammar on this steaming pile of moose droppings”.

And doesn’t the indignation come fast from 21-year-olds who think they’re great writers just because they’ve got a BComm and they once scored an A+ for a reflective piece in Year 10 English. And I’ve heard them all too. “Noone worries about grammar anymore, I’m writing for the SMS generation.” “Our system should have spellcheckers…” (it purposely doesn’t).”It’s just my job to report, it’s your job to worry about the quality of writing…” (fucking WHAT?!?) and “I’m only in print media until I score a gig on radio or TV…” (not if your arse gets sacked, bucko). I’ve even heard the “English language is a wonderful dynamic creature…” argument before.

The standards have definitely fallen and they continue to fall. This morning, an e-mail from someone way up the food chain that expressed a desire that certain people should “…get there shit together”. I cried. What hope have us grammarians got in such cruel, unforgiving world?

Bit of a stretch.

The Prime Minister admits he can’t live on the single age pension of $273-a-week, so he jets off overseas in a not-too-subtle attempt to avoid the issue completely.

Don’t type angry

Oh, Apple. Why do you taunt me so?

Even if “funnest” was a word, I’d still wouldn’t buy an electronic product just because it’s the most fun model ever released. Perhaps if it was the “advancedest” or the “powerfulest” or something. Perhaps.

Went to camp and got a severe dose of kiddie flu. Also got really hungry because I refused to eat at a dinner table that bore this sign.

Trust me, there was more than one teacher

I was also arrested by security guards at a wildlife park for attempting to vandalise the following signs.

Death to all grocer’s

Not. A. Plural.

Then I got home with an incompletely-healed dislocated toe which, together with the flu, forced me to withdraw from last night’s almost-certain-to-win GroupThinkFC match. I’ll let Ant fill you in later. I’m too depressed.

From journalist (sic) and ‘million man’ Andrew Bolt:

John Pilger says Japan wanted to surrender, so the bombing of Hiroshima was yet another American war crime. Japan’s war-time Prime Minister begs to differ…

Gosh, whom to believe about Japan’s intentions – it’s leader or Pilger?

(Thanks to reader Owen.)

And grammar courtesy of another reader from south-east Queensland.

So I was checking my Facebook this morning when I saw this advertisement.

A more desperate and pitiful excuse for a corporation, with less sense of brand building, I’ve never seen — I mean, they can’t even write “flame grilled Whopper” proper

A couple of days ago Bridgit exclusively revealed the shittest advertisement ever made, advertising the shittest promotion ever promoted, and now it seems that Hungry Jack’s is also begging people to become “fans” of a shitty fast food chain on Facebook. I simply had to check it out so I clicked on the ad, expecting to see an abandoned corner in the wastelands of Facebook, but was horrified to see…

…1,952 fans!!!!1!

I’m genuinely shocked. How can somebody’s life be so devoid of meaning that they find themselves pledging their fandom of a fast food chain publicly? How? But then again, clicking on a button to become a “fan” of something on Facebook takes one movement of the hand, a fraction of a second, and barely a moment’s thought. These people would probably sign up as “fans” and then forget about it. They certainly wouldn’t go to the pathetic effort of actually writing anything on the Hungry Jack’s page, would they?

By clicking submit on your comment about a fast food chain you agree that you are a loser with no life

They would. Anastasia, Krystie (sic) and “Utegirl”, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

And the orthographic Nazi in me just can’t help pointing out the double-barreled apostrophe error on the chain’s super-exciting photo gallery page.

Hungry Jack’s: FAIL.

Remember how I ranted a few months ago about totally un-1337 people and organisations lamely embracing technology to try and sell their message?

Even religion — smarting from the way that younger generations are beginning to turn away in droves — is embarrassing itself by attempting to use technological tools to reconnect with tha kidz. The Catholic Church has well and truly entered the 1990s by discovering the power of mobile phone SMS. They have been sending text messages to worshippers in the false hope that using semi-literacy for Bible passages will bring them instant cred.

Well, now the Pope has sent his first text message. And it’s an apostrophe FAIL.

“Young friend, God and his people expect much from u because u have within you the Fathers (sic) supreme gift: the Spirit of Jesus – BXVI.”

Aaaaargh!!1!

AAAAAAARGH!!!1!

Needs more pastel

Since Ed has succumbed to the temptation we all try so hard to resist – not posting lolcats (oh, glorious lolcats!) – and clearly therefore GrodsCorp is now a site of more flexible editorial standards than we might otherwise have assumed, I think he’ll appreciate this graph posted today at GraphJam:

Amusing RSS feed plus grammatical grumpiness! If only there were cute kittehs.

I’m a self-confessed orthographic Nazi who suffers from OCD (Orthographic Compulsive Disorder). I get irrationally angry when I see incorrectly used apostrophes. I mean, not just kinda grumpy, but ANGRY! I get pictures in my head of people dying violent deaths and a sort of red film appears in front of my vision and I start flexing my knuckles and my teeth clench and I find myself walking into hardware stores asking for prices on chainsaws and…

Oh well, you get the idea.

However, I do take comfort in the fact that at least two people share my disorder. Bridgit Gread hates it when people put an exclamation mark inside brackets in the middle (!) of a sentence. Bron goes postal when people… overuse… ellipses…

Now, when Bridgit, Bron and I had our OCD support group meeting last night we decided that it would become increasingly easier to cope with our conditions as we found more people who share it. So, GrodsReaders, can you please share with us your own OCD triggers in comments?

Australian Education Union (Victorian branch) members today received an email from Branch President Mary Bluett. In the email Mary reiterated the reasons behind the series of four hour rolling stoppages that begin tomorrow and attached a recent letter (PDF) she wrote to education minister Bronwyn Pike, along with Pike’s response (PDF). Remembering that I am a total orthographic Nazi and a teacher, imagine my horror when I saw this in Bluett’s letter.

My retinas!

Firstly, Mary Bluett used to be a teacher so she has no excuse. Secondly, that must surely be somebody between Mary Bluett and the fax machine whose job it is to do a spot of proof reading and prevent that sort of shite ending up on the minister for education’s desk.

Mary Bluett’s school teachers obviously spent too much time forcing her to watch indigenous apologies, debate Australian politics and plant trees.

UPDATE (8:10pm): As Junaman points out in comments there is an error in Bronwyn Pike’s letter that I totally missed.

Bluett – 1, Pike – 1