Category: Literacy

Writers trying (and failing) to fake literacy and their tendency to misuse words they _think_ they know the meanings of simply manage to spread subliteracy. Today’s misused word (out of MANY by noon, despite the fact that I have not been on the Interwebs longer than 20 minutes today before now): utilize. No, it does not simply mean “use” in more (unnecessary) syllables. It either means a chemical process wherein the uptake of a nutrient is effected or to effectively use a thing for a purpose for which it was not originally intended (Thus “utilize” is often proper referring to redneck reengineering of common items for new, and often unique, applications. 🙂 ) At least, those were _once_ the very useful distinctions between “use” and “utilize,” but as subliterates spread their “mass-man” (TY, Ortega) influence to other subliterates, a once very useful word is becoming simply a pedestrian means of distinguishing between literates and subliterates.

Oh, and an annoyance to anyone who wants to genuinely master English.

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a [library] for?” (with semi-sincere apology to Robert browning)

I have been “buying” anywhere between seven and 30-something books a week for years (larger numbers once ebooks became necessary when I ran out of space no matter how diligently I purged my personal library). I only read about seven books a week (down from the 20-something I used to read when I was a lad), but I do find I discard more ebooks after partial reading than I have ever discarded hardcopy. Writing and editing standards have slipped terribly.

Still, having all my hardcopy classic collection backed up in multiple formats, media, and locations (and adding to it) is a Good Thing, IMO. Sadly, my non-fiction Kindle is out of storage space, now.

I see it all the time, but again today some “misunderedumacated” subliterate stuck on the lefthand side of the Dunning-Kruger Curve pontificated on a subject he was–of course–completely unqualified (because of his ignorance) to comment on, and while doing so misused “wreckless,” because (again, of course) he did not know the differences between “reckless” and “wreckless.” Such subliterate (or really, by any reasonable standard, illiterate) people almost always misuse all or some of the following words (and more, many, many more):

rein/reign
affect/effect
than/then
here/hear
buy/by
accept/except
weather/whether
there/their/they’re
to/too/two
you’re/your
bear/bare
one/won
brake/break
complement/compliment
aloud/allowed
lie/lay
it’s/its
capital/capitol
principle/principal
stationary/stationery
sight/site/cite
since/sense
our/hour
red/read
reed/read

. . . and many, many (MANY) more such. *sigh*

Now, someone might plead, “Oh, but that’s just a problem in vocabulary.” No. If someone does not know the meanings of the words they read or write, then they are really no better off than someone who cannot decode those funny lil squiggles to obtain the words they indicate. Worse off, in fact, because they may well erroneously think they are literate (because by the standards of “misunderedumacationism” they have been lied to, having been told they are–why! they have a piece or pieces of paper to prove it! #gagamaggot).

Fluency =/= literacy. A person may have a wide verbal vocabulary of words they understand and still be illiterate.

How to amend this? Reading a lot of well-written text authored by literate people can eradicate this sort of illiteracy. It’s either that or do what I did as a lad (along with reading a LOT of well-written text): read dictionaries–and not just one! And not just any dictionary, either. I have a shelf full of dictionaries, and I have found the ones published before the 1970s to be the more literate of the selections I have. *shrugs* Make of that what you will. Oh, and not just in English (for English readers, which I assume are the only readers of this blog). Having dictionaries on other language, including English-German, English-French, etc., can be useful in understanding WHY such homonyms as “reckless/wreckless” are very, very different words.

But still, reading well-written text from literate writers (while having a good dictionary by one’s side 😉 ) is the single best way to become literate, once one has mastered the relatively simple task of decoding those funny lil squiggles that stand in for phonemes in written text.

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Sidebar: only peripherally related to literate vocabulary. Saw a website the other day by someone who cited their creds as “EDd”. Sorry, cupcake. If you have a doctorate in education, you ought to know that is denoted by EdD or Ed.D. But maybe the cred referred to is a doctorate in “[misunder]edumacationism.”

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P.S. Yes, I am well aware that the dumbed down definition of “literacy” is well accepted. Of course it is. “Edumacationists” can’t defend their failure to promote real literacy, so the only definition such will accept is “can decode those funny lil squiggles, whether they can really understand the content or not.”

#gagamaggot

While examples of illiteracy abound in Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind “reporting,” books–whether published by traditional publishing venues or self-pub writers–and social media (a rich, rich field to mine for examples), almost nothing beats so-called “memes”¹ for a steady supply of illiterate text. Example:

The “meme” featured above was apparently composed by a “misunderedumacated” product of “public education” (A.K.A. “prisons for kids”). The abbreviation for “second” is “2nd,” not “2ed.” Oh, and standard English orthography does NOT have a space between the last word in a sentence and the punctuation closing the sentence, and a question should be punctuated with a question mark, not an exclamation mark. Those practices are reserved for those who never became literate.

But I am sure the reader can supply many, many such examples of folks proudly displaying their illiteracy in “memes” they hope will spread (and infect others with their illiterate text).

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¹meme: “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture,” or at least that was the meaning when Richard Dawkins coined the word. Since, stupid people have misused it enough that a secondary meaning has become accepted by many as the only meaning they are (illiterately) aware of: “amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media,” and further devolved to mean some graphic/text combo that some illiterate boob hopes will spread. . . #gagamaggot

From The Online Etymology Dictionary:

“apocalypse (n.)

“late 14c., “revelation, disclosure,” from Church Latin apocalypsis “revelation,” from Greek apokalyptein “uncover, disclose, reveal,” from apo “off, away from” (see apo-) + kalyptein “to cover, conceal,” from PIE root *kel- (1) “to cover, conceal, save.” The Christian end-of-the-world story is part of the revelation in John of Patmos’ book “Apokalypsis” (a title rendered into English as pocalipsis c. 1050, “Apocalypse” c. 1230, and “Revelations” by Wyclif c. 1380).

“Its general sense in Middle English was “insight, vision; hallucination.” The meaning “a cataclysmic event” is modern (not in OED 2nd ed., 1989); apocalypticism “belief in an imminent end of the present world” is from 1858. As agent nouns, “author or interpreter of the ‘Apocalypse,'” apocalypst (1829), apocalypt (1834), and apocalyptist (1824) have been tried.”