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"It was to die for." Ugh. And "24/7." Descriptive when it first came out but so overused that it's become nauseating. One reads it in newspaper articles! And my all time unfavorite that never seems to disappear, "been there, done that."
English changes all the time, language evolves, all active languages evolve.
The English you deem is proper now days was not proper 200 years ago and it will not be proper even 2 generations from now.
No one can expect perfection when the standard is changing every day. I have in my possession two Harbrace writing books and one of them is an old edition and one of them is the new one, both have many things that are different in them.
The point of a language is communication, there is an acceptable standard of deviation in the language among people due to many different reasons. If you understand what someone else says, then the purpose of the language is fullfilled.
Society ultimately decides the fate and course of a language since the purpose of a language is for society to communicate among each other.
One of the major writing rules I expect to go away is capital letters at the beginning of sentences.
People 100 years ago may have been saying the same thing about the currnet English you speak now.
I do see a lot of informalities in the language, brought on part by the electronic age. Myself when in the Navy we typed with all caps, commas and periods only because the computer messaging systems would not accept anything else. Do that almost every day for 10 years and see how effected your writing style becomes.
The trouble I have seen, personally I might add, is the lack of enforcement at the college level. I really do nto expect everyone to place commas perfectly or avoid fragmented sentences all the time, etc. But what I do expect is not to write as if you are writing an SMS to someone, the abbreviations are ridiculous and to use it in a formal classroom setting is even more ridiculous.
I would never pass judgment on a forum like this due to the fact (or perception) that it is more of a nonformal relaxed environment where many feel they rather just type and *** as fast as possible then go back and find corrections on every little think as if they are turning in a term paper. Of course that has its limits, but really the forum is for entertainment, it is in my opinion not too entertaining to go and find corrections on every little post.
But practice makes perfect, perfect practice makes perfect, I am far from the best writer and speaker, but I try my best and do get in a hurry soemtimes, especially in areas like forums.
My wife has taken many Lingustics anthropology courses as she is pursuing a linguistics degree, the information is very interesting, the evolving of languages is spectacular and languages do have one thing in common, the less flexible they are, the more often they either get over ran by another language that is flexible or they go extinct all together.
One that gets to me is, "...yomsayn?" (translation: "...you know what I'm saying?"). It tends to come after every second or third sentence, yomsayn. It's almost like a superstitious chant, yomsayn?
Look, I'm a fairly intelligent person. I can follow your train of thought across three, even four sentences. You needn't stop every other sentence to make sure I'm still with you. Trust me, if I don't "know what you're saying", I'll probably stop you and say, "What the h*ll are you saying???"
I hate catch-phrases!! Please stop me if anyone ever notices me doing it. From what someone on here has said, thank God I've never watched that TV show, Friends.
Also, what about those TV newscasters who all ask us a question? They're supposed to be delivering the news to us! Have you ever noticed that? For instance: "Is there rain in the forecast?" Stop asking the viewing public! Why the freak (I'm keeping that one) do you think we turned the news on? It always sounds so idiotic.
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