[Welcome to a bona fide rant. I don't really do it often, but this one's been on my mind for a while.]
Punctuate properly, please! (Among other things.)
For most of my adult life, I've worked with words in some fashion or another. I've held positions that used communication in some form or another throughout my entire career. I've done it all in person conversations, over-the-phone work, written materials, sales, marketing, journalism, proofreading, information management and much more.
My name might be a clue that I LIKE words.
I work with them because they are important to me, and so is the functional expression of ideas and concepts. I strongly believe in using language properly when possible.
I've recently begun working on some really fascinating projects with some very smart people. These folks are well-educated and make a killing in their fields. I do understand at some level that their fields aren't language, and perhaps language isn't as precious to them as I hold it; but there's a certain level of disregard that is driving me insane.
Learning to use a comma and a period are things one does in early elementary school, and are not difficult concepts to master. Others' failure to use these important tools in written correspondence is one of my largest frustrations. They are "serious business" . They tell others to take a small break, or to STOP. They give you power! They let you tell other people what to do.
I cannot grasp the concept of being a fully functional professional person without the ability to punctuate or properly match tenses. For you math geeks, it's probably a lot like the idea of not being able to add more triple digits without a calculator. I find it infuriating and more than a little insane-making when I read a post or article with awful spelling, no quotation marks, terrible run-ons and no real structure.
SPELL CHECK. How much work is it to add a period in between thoughts? Why is "start a new paragraph for every new idea" so hard to handle?
Understandably run-on sentences occur a mite more than ideal; it can be challenging for you to separate ideas when thoughts are coming a mile a minute. I try to forgive those as I've been guilty, too. I'm also very fond of the em dash and I'll give a guy a pass on that one. I cannot for even a moment "get" the total disregard for quotation marks I see nearly everywhere.
I know. There are a few tricky situations for those funny "commas in the sky", but for the most part; it is simple. Person A says something. It is then repeated for others to hear. Person A's comments go in quotations.
Don't even get me started on "you're" and "your". I will go positively mental over this one. I'm honestly willing to forgive most other homonyms, because they really are not always intuitive. But FFS, "you're" makes it OBVIOUS it is a combination of two words! It's a contraction. It means YOU ARE. Saying "your" (a single word, meaning "it belongs to you") when you mean "you're" (two words, "you are") just makes me want to kill babies, or kittens.
I could get a lot more specific, but I'll leave it at this: If you're not sure or get strange replies regularly; get help.
If you need some help, check out the following: (They are free!)
And use a period!
