Those...Three...Dots...

I have never been much of an ellipses exploiter. Whenever my friends overuse those three dots, I get annoyed. Sometimes they just seem so unnecessary and vague. It is because of this article that I realized that ellipses are even more annoying than what I had previously believed. I hadn't realized some of the grammatical sins that people are committing because of these three fools. 

First of all, why are people even using the ellipses more than once in every single text or Tweet they send? They use it in a horrible way. This addresses the way in which people in our century are promulgating a writing revolution. As referred in this article and the previous one we read about commas, people of this time are writing as they would speak. And this has brought a lot of consequences for the writing world. Since we now write as we would communicate through speech, we omit commas and write in a more relaxed way. This brings a huge problem; we are not even completing sentences. Ellipses are just another excuse to be lazy and make our lives easier, making it possible for texters to join dependent clauses without coherence. 

But is it really making our lives easier? Many people are not even getting what everyone has to say because with the three dots, the meaning of a message can be quite confusing if there are no complete sentences involved. The laziness and lack of coherence have made it difficult for message receivers to understand. 

Now that I think about it, I have used ellipses before. However, not as a shortcut or because I'm lazy. I'm actually not lazy at all when it comes to texting and informal writing. I use ellipses only the way that I've learned to use them in school. As the article explained, "in more formal writing, ellipses are often used to show omissions from within a piece of text." That's literally the only way I incorporate the three dots in my writing, and I think that's the way it should be for everyone. 

You Guys Are Commas That Important Anyway Like Seriously?

I find it very sad the way commas are being ignored today. This article from Slate depicts the unfortunate reality that encompasses our world. Twitter and other social networks have been feeding this new rejection of commas. I believe its main cause is the way our generation (the millennials) and even older people who inhabit the social network realm have become lazy. 

Extreme laziness is what leads to the purge of comma use. I attach a screenshot of some example tweets that talk about this problem. I honestly think that writing without commas looks ridiculous, and it's kind of absurd how people will ignore something as simple as a comma. It just makes this users seem very lazy, although it's not their fault completely, it's just the way in which language and writing has evolved. 

It's not only laziness that has been causing this phenomenon, but as Anne Curzan said, it's also because we are now writing more in the same way we speak: "the decreasing use of commas...may be tied to efforts at making communications more stylistically fun and more similar too spoken conversation." This means we're not only skipping commas, but ignoring capitalization and committing other grammatical errors. It's quite funny because we also now suppose that certain grammatical tools are used to emote certain emotions. As Malady mentioned, the period (".") is now used as an emoter of anger, or seriousness. I completely understand this, for I always use periods only when I'm mad or distant.  

However, I definitely haven't banned commas from my texting habits yet. I honestly don't think I will, even though it makes me sound more formal whenever I text or tweet. I don't care, I can't be at peace knowing I'm writing run on sentences in small daily conversations. As Coco Chanel believed, "it's always better to be overdressed than underdressed." I mean, one could say it works the same way here. And although some say it makes life easier to simply write as you would converse, I think it's more important to conserve something as basic and necessary as a comma. Without it, writers can come off as childish, uneducated, or ignorant. 

FYI, I'm still suffering a little with the title of this post. 

Language War Zone

Evolution happens. Like it or not, it just does. Humans evolve, technology evolves, and even language evolves. Just like the picture here to the left. It refers to the type of response we see a lot now days in text messages; the infamous "k." How can we have passed from writing a sentence that emotes our legitimate response, to a simple consonant? While some think that language should stay as conventional and original as possible, others think that language should evolve and we should all adjust to those changes. 

After reading this debate from The New York Times about language, I realized that I'm a "descriptivist". What that means is that I basically accept the fact that language is evolving, and that some rules expire as time goes by. Descriptivist accept and acknowledge the language as it is used in the present. On the other hand, as one of the debaters from the Language Wars, there are "prescriptivists." This is the kind of people who focus more on how the language "should be used", or in other words, they prioritize the correctness of the language. While both types of people are valid, I think that with the speed that the 21st century is evolving, we all have to be descriptivists now days or else we will be wasting our time. 

Something that we learn as human beings, at some point in our lives, is that we all make mistakes. We can't escape from the fact that mistakes are part of our growth and understanding of how life works. I have done many mistakes in my life. Teachers commit a lot of mistakes. Native speakers make mistakes too. Even freaking E.B. White made a mistake in one of his writing pieces. It simply happens. Why should we punish ourselves about the grammatical mistakes that we commit with all of the rules of grammar, and what not? Honestly, many people in our world don't care if we use "which" and "that" incorrectly, or in place of each other. Some even ignore the acknowledgment and distinction of homophones. I'm not saying we should all ignore grammar rules and do whatever we please to do with our writing. My point is that some traditional and conservative rules of grammar (such as the one from the debate - the "which" & "that" dilemma) become less important to people, and eventually they begin to disappear. That's why I don't think we should judge and criticize the 21st century way of communicating: texting. Texting is simply an evolution of a medium of communication that itself brings new ways of saying things in a more grammatically rebellious way. 

I don't know, maybe I "demonize prescriptivists" like Greene (according to Graner). I'm just completely biased and in favor of the evolution of language, and it is really annoying that some people won't accept that and move on. And this doesn't mean that i WriTe l!ke diz nd i dont care 4 grammer rulezz. I actually agree with Greene when he mentions that “there is a set of standard conventions everyone needs for formal writing and speaking," because if there wasn't we wouldn't be able to communicate correctly and understand what each of us has to say. However, this doesn't mean we should follow absolutely every rule that exists in the world of grammar if it isn't absolutely necessary in order to emote our message.

In the end, people are the ones who choose what to do with their writing ability. Maybe for some of us right now it seems like a horrible violation to ignore grammatical rules when we, say, text. However, in 50 years, we'll see that the change we are going through was less intense than the one we'll see then. It's the way it has been and felt in history, and we just gotta learn to accept this change and evolution that is happening right now.