Signs and Portents of Declining Literacy

While even I (*gasp!* really?!?, moi? *heh*) am subject to errors of this sort from time to time (particularly after struggling to read through many long text samples by subliterates), a fairly sure sign of poor literacy (that is, not being well-read) is using compound words that are adjectives or adverbs in place of noun or verb phrases OR using separate words when compounds of those words is proper.

Already vs All ready
Altogether vs All together
Anyone vs Any one
Anything vs Any thing
Awhile vs A while. . .
. . .
Backseat vs Back seat. . .
. . .
Everyday vs Every day. . .
. . .
Maybe vs May be. . .
. . .
Sometime vs Some time. . .
. . .
Workout vs Work out. . .

And many, many more.

Why do some writers regularly mix such things up? Because they are not well-read. Such writers may have read a lot of text, but if they have, the text they have read has been written by poorly-read, less than genuinely literate writers. Being well-read requires having read enough text by genuinely literate writers to have absorbed good language skills, which includes, among many attributes, knowing the useful distinctions between such compound words as listed above and the phrases they’ve been compounded from. (Insert obligatory Winston Churchill comment about ending sentences with prepositions here. 🙂 )

Of course, that’s only one, of many, abilities a literate writer will have in his bag, but when it’s missing, one can be pretty sure that the writer who lacks this ability is just too lazy to have done his homework. He might be a good storyteller or public speaker/lecturer, but he’s not really literate enough to be trusted with a pen (or keyboard) and a publisher (even if it is himself*).


*Subliterate self-pubs/”Indie” writers almost invariably are too cheap (or financially strapped) to pay for decent editing–either content or line editing–and even if they try “crowdsourcing” such things usually only appeal to their own cohort of subliterates to check their work. *gagamaggot* Of course, there are literate “Indie” writers with literate peers and readers, and their works are generally edited to a standard that, nowadays, exceeds that of the increasingly poor quality of editing coming from traditional publishing houses. Not common but welcome.

Addictions

Some are not necessarily all that bad, ya know?

I have a lifelong friend (former college room mate) I once asked for something to read (late, had read everything in the apartment–I thought–and just wanted some words in front of my face). He handed me a soup can. I was happy. Yeh, addicted to the printed word. It’s an addiction I can live with, though. (After the soup can, I read some cereal boxes. I had the whole pantry to get through.)

Does This Irk Me? Well, Yes, It Does.

One word mis-usage I find trending strongly of late is the misuse of “bring” for “take.” It’s an easy (and extremely useful) distinction to make; simplified: bring HERE; take THERE. When someone uses it to say they will “bring [something somewhere]” (or a close variation) to mean they will TAKE [something somewhere], it’s a pretty clear sign that they aren’t really literate . . . OR have been spending WAY too much time in the company of illiterates and have succumbed to their bad influence.

“My brakes are acting up. I’m going to bring it in tomorrow to find out what’s wrong,” only semi-works IF the speaker is at the mechanic’s at the time of speaking (or is speaking to the mechanic about bringing it to him. Of course, if one were AT the mechanic’s at the time and had bad brakes, it’d be foolish not to leave the car at that time). If one were NOT at the mechanic’s and NOT speaking to him but to a third party, then “bring” is just stupid in that context.

Puzzle out those funny lil squiggles? Maybe. Understand the meaning those funny lil squiggles are intended to convey? Being able to put on paper (or in electronic “ink”) some funny lil squiggles that actually contain meaning with any clarity at all? It’s a crapshoot for college grads nowadays.


Sidebar: given the evidence of swelling illiteracy in our society, it seems obvious that spending billions and billions of dollars to add administration jobs to “education” doesn’t appear to be improving education.

I Post These Kinds of Things Because You’re Slacking Off

The problem with self-pub? Whole HERDS of 20-something illiterate liberal arts graduates “writing” books for a “readership” of their peers. The sheer depth of their cultural, historical and LITERARY illiteracy (grammar atrocities, word misuse, COMPLETE misunderstanding of background and usage of common expressions, etc., etc.) is mind-boggling. It’s too late to lobotomize them. They’ve already done such a good job on themselves, already.

(Yes, there are a few who actually either know how to use a dictionary and form moderately coherent sentences. . . or else have gone outside their cohort and enlisted the aid of the rare literate proofreader/editor to clean up their glurge.)

Yeh, yeh. Dylan Thomas said it best (though about a different kind of death): “Rage, rage against the dying of the light. . . ” *heh*

Not All “Literates” Are

The US reached an impressive 81% high school graduation rate in 2013. That was also the year that, had previous models been followed, the Department of (Mis)Education would have conducted another National Assessment of Adult Literacy. But, of course, following the dismal results of the 2003 assessment (which varied not a whit from the 1993 assessment) did not militate for yet another embarrassing survey.

Oh, that 2003 NAAL? Here’s all you need to know: 69% of recent (at that time) college grads could not read and understand “complex text” that included bus schedules, want ads, warning labels and driving directions.

BTW, the CIA Factbook defines that level of “reading” ability as illiteracy. Warring bureaucrappies? No, because although more than 50% of Americans–based on the NAAL, cannot read such materials, the CIA Factbook hilariously states that American literacy is over 97%. BTW, the NAAL dumbed down the term “literacy” to the point that it could come up with an 81% literacy rate. The data disagrees. . . and has become harder to get to recently, for some reason.

Has literacy in the US improved since then? The question virtually answers itself.

*sigh*

While it is not (yet) correct to say that all US citizens are functionally illiterate, it is far to say not only that not all US citizens are functionally illiterate, but that probably 50% or more of them can tell no difference between the first statement and the second.

Valley Girl University

*gagamaggot*

Reading almost anything written in the last 30 years is a crap shoot. As traditional publishers have come to be run more and more by bean counters and literate editors have been more and more pushed aside in favor of hucksters who know how to weigh manuscripts or some other such stupid criteria, the murder of the English language there has become more and more par for the course. Still, there seem to be a (very) few literate adults left in trad pub houses.

“Indie” publishing is all over the place, but yes, execrable treatment of English is a wee tad more common in “Indie” books. It’s as though in all forms of publishing practiced nowadays, books are becoming dominated by products from writers (and proofreaders and editors) who all received degrees in Assassinating English from Valley Girl U.

Example abound, but the proximal cause of this wee rant is,

“If X didn’t hack into Y’s accounts and trace the money to Z, we might never have put it together.”

No, moronic graduate of Valley Girl U. No. “”If X hadn’t hacked. . . ”

I really, really, really wanted to dope slap the writer (and any proofreader and editor) for that, especially since it was the capstone of many usage, grammar and utterly stupid POV errors.

People who want to get paid to write (or proofread or edit) text should do their due diligence. They ought to at least work to become minimally literate. The example above disqualifies the writer (and any proofreader and editor involved in the book) from inclusion in the class, “literate.”


Continue reading “Valley Girl University”

I Blame “Mass Man”

OK, “backyard” I can almost buy as a noun, since it’s been (fairly infrequently) used that way, and not just as an adjective, since the 17th Century. It’s still infelicitous. (And note the differences in pronunciation between “back yard” [separate adj+noun] and “backyard”[adj]) But using the adjective “backseat” as a noun in place of “back seat” is just laziness, committed by writers whose verbal vocabulary exceeds their reading/writing vocabulary (and who have a tin ear for nuances of pronunciation, as well). How many morons write “frontseat” to be used as a noun? Yeh, maybe a few–though in today’s increasingly illiterate society, increasing in number–morons. Unfortunately, there is a growing number of subliterate, lazy writers misusing adjectives as nouns. . . and editors and “proofreaders” who are just as subliterate and lazy. All should be flogged with dangling participles.

And all of the above who get paid for their abuse of English should be flogged–for real–through the streets before being tarred and feathered.

That is all. For now. . .

Something the Internet Is Good For

[Just a lil stream of consciousness rant. . . ]

One thing the Internet is really good for: revealing the extent of subliteracy1 in society. Small example: folks who misuse as nouns compound words that are adjectives, instead of using the separate adjective/noun phrase that applies, or who misuse adverbs that have been formed as compound words instead of using the adverb/verb phrase that is appropriate. FarceBook yields a good example. It offers “Log in” to, urm, log in but offers the noun, “logout,” for the action of logging out, instead of “log out,” as it ought. Other examples are almost endless, it seems.

“War monger” when the word is “warmonger.”

“Backseat” (adjective) when referring to a “back seat.”

“Nevermind” (*gagamaggot*–an almost sure sign of a 20-something nearly illiterate grup; still useful when writing archaic dialog, though meaning not at all what the aforementioned grups might intend) instead of “never mind.”

“Alot” (which is a “word” only in the nearly non-existant minds of self-made morons) instead of “a lot.”

Misuse of “altogether” (a perfectly useful word meaning “entirely” in place of “all together” (something like “as a group”).

Misuse of “everyday” (adjective: commonplace, quotidian) for “every day” (a regular, daily occurrence).

And, of course, the plethora of examples of verb phrases versus compound nouns that poorly-read people get wrong with fair consistency, because they have never (or have not often enough) read examples used correctly.

When I read things like this in someone’s text, I can be fairly certain that they are lazy thinkers who have not bothered to do their basic homework (that is, bother to become literate) before committing their slop to text.

Of course, these little indicators are just part of the package, and more subliteracy indicators await the conscious reader. Still, these canaries can give a quick tip to careful readers that the oxygen’s being replaced with toxic fumes in whatever text they contain.

Thank you, Internet, for showing the true value of a hyper-democratic society: a rush to the bottom of an ever lower common denominator.


[micro-mini addendum]

A slightly different problem, of course, is dumbass illiterates misusing words they think they know the meanings of, and we’ve probably all seen a bellyfull of this. From the mother country of the English language, published recently in a “professionally edited,” internationally read newsrag, this:

“Each date was captured on camera, with the ‘big reveal’ illiciting [sic] wildly different reactions from the women. While some find it funny, at least two of the women struggle to hide their disappointment at Joe’s conceit [sic].”

THAT got published?!? *gagamaggot* No wonder illiteracy in English is rampant. . . and not just in the US.

1subliteracy: a neologism I have not seen elsewhere, though someone else must certainly use it, intended to convey just what it appears to convey: a condition of poor literacy that does not approach a standard that could be reasonably called “literacy” by any honest person. Subliterates can generally puzzle out the words formed by letters, though they often have only vague ideas–if any at all–what the words they have puzzled out actually mean. And in those cases where subliterates do know words’ meanings, their reading vocabulary is vastly overshadowed by their oral vocabulary, rendering their own attempts to reproduce what they have heard (quite often from those who, like them, are not at all well-read) incorrect.

Gross examples of this are simple misused words such as using “then” for “than” (or vice versa) or any of the plethora of sadly laughable misuses regularly promulgated in social media, blogs, discussion lists and even Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind “professionally” written and edited subliterate crap.

But a sure sign of subliteracy–chiefly of being exceedingly poorly read–is this problem of either misuse of compound words or the failure to use a common compound word where it is appropriate. This is a common failing of poorly-read writers.

Remember: Literacy of College Graduates Is on Decline

Cluebat: Things are no better in 2015 than they were in 2005 when that WaPo article was written about the 2003 NAAL. In fact, the 2003 NAAL data (not the Ed Department spin on the data) showed the situation to be worse than the article states, because the “complex text” that “recent college graduates” couldn’t read and comprehend included bus schedules, want ads and med instructions as found on prescription med bottles.

Do note: I do not consider myself as well read as either of my grandfathers, for example. Just saying.

Spreading subliterate crap. . .

. . . one article at a time.

So some subliterate (backed up by subliterate editor[s?]) has written a “helpful tip” article about cleaning one’s oven in an amazing way that anyone who’s not dumber than a bag of hammers already knows. naturally, it’s peppered with crap like this:

“Let sit over night [sic]. The baking soda will need at least 12 hours to work it`s [sic] magic.”

No, moron. “Overnight”–one word–and “its” is the possessive of “it”.

If the “writer” were literate or at least had a literate editorial staff to back her, this crap wouldn’t be in the article, useless as it is to anyone who is actually an adult.

*sigh* So maybe there’s an adult American somewhere who is so clueless that they’ve never been exposed to baking soda and vinegar for cleaning. Wastes of oxygen.