Category: Literacy

*sigh* I see things like this all the time, mostly in social media, “news” articles from established Hivemind outlets, and more and more in published works whether from traditional “gatekeeping” publishers or self-pubs: the inexcusable abuse of the simple past tense when past perfect is dictated by the sense of the statement, as in: “14 Zip [XYZ] Hacks You’ll Wish You Knew Earlier.” No, “You’ll (you will) wish you HAD KNOWN earlier.” Often it is in the same work where the writer (and any “professional” editorial/proofreading eye) also has no clue about forming conditional statements, especially past [unreal] conditionals, for example, “If I WOULD HAVE owned a car, I would have driven to work.” No, cupcake. “If I HAD owned a car, I would have driven to work.”

These are all too typical, “You are NOT smarter than a fifth grader” literacy issues.

“. . .[T]he economy sunk [sic] deeper into the red. . . ” was all that was needed to convince me to stop reading the article. If neither the writer nor any putative editor could bother to be more literate than a fifth grader, then buh-bye! (And yes, there were other such things before the last straw.) When a writer has no real respect for his readers (and apparently no self-respect at all) such that he does not even bother to learn standard conjugations for strong verbs (by reading literate text, if nothing else!), then why should I pollute my time with his dreck?

And no, I refuse to link the piece here. I’ll have a hard enough time erasing the experience from memory. *heh*

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Just in case any reader who did not pass fifth grade should stumble on this, “Sank is the past tense (e.g., the ship sank to the bottom of the sea). Sunk is the past participle, so it’s used in the perfect tenses (e.g., the ship has sunk to the bottom of the sea) and as an adjective (the sunk ship is at the bottom of the sea).”¹

Literacy is a spectrum. Illiteracy–the inability to even puzzle out those funny lil squiggles on a page of text–is the on one end of the spectrum. Formal Literacy is on the other end of the spectrum. True illiteracy is an absolute. Formal literacy has no upper/outer boundaries. Material Literacy is being able to puzzle out those funny lil squiggles but having only a bare concept of their meanings. Subliteracy is just beyond that: having a material grasp of basic meanings imparted by those funny lil squiggles, but a poor grasp of historical or cultural implications and hence able to grasp only basic information in text, at best. There is quite a large overlap of Material Literacy and Subliteracy. Formal Literacy indicates a grasp of cultural and historical contexts, along with many different sorts of idioms, such that a simple citation of, say, Gresham’s Law by name only imparts a great deal of information or simply saying (or writing) “There is a tide [in the affairs of men]. . .” with no further citation calls to mind the context of that remark. Examples are legion, and my own attempt to attain formal literacy is always finding more such cultural enrichment to add to my lexicon.

Where folks who have never made the effort to even start becoming formally literate (As I implied, I’m still just past the starting blocks in my search for formal literacy, myself) demonstrate their failure to READ MANY BOOKS *heh* is in mangling idioms. Using “free reign” instead of the correct “free rein,” “come down the pipe” instead of the correct “come down the pike,” “chomps at the bit” instead of the correct “champs at the bit,” and other such things just indicates that whoever writes such things stopped expanding their literate vocabulary probably somewhere around fourth grade. Such folks write what they have heard (or misheard) from their (probably) similarly subliterate peers, and as an unwillingness to read well-written text seems endemic to society nowadays, I suspect subliteracy to remain ascendant.

(When commenting, please feel free to misuse words, abuse or neglect apostrophes, mangle syntax and grammar, or simply type, “TL;DR.” I wanna feel like I posted this on FarceBook.)

#le_sigh

“. . .inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.” ~ Twain

Re: reading programs in general. My Wonder Woman (a school librarian/”Media Specialist”) has finally seen some movement resulting from her campaign to get away from regimented reading programs and encourage/allow kids to read whatever interests them (within the scope of what she is allowed to have in her collections). Circulation at both her libraries is up, and reading scores have improved dramatically since the regimented reading programs in her two schools have been relaxed in one and eliminated in the other.

One of the things she has excelled in is taking kids with very low reading scores on standardized testing and engaging them in ways that spur their interest in books, primarily by focusing on their personal areas of interest. So far, this has resulted in not only contributing to improving their reading skills but also in broadening their interests. More and more of these “marginal readers” (below grade level, sometimes by several grades) have advanced to well above grade level in reading comprehension.

Interest. When kids discover that books can increase their knowledge/understanding of the things they are interested in, it can make a difference for the better.

(Of course, those with severe cognitive/perceptive impairments of some kind require other kinds of intervention, but excellent tools and materials are available there, as well.)

Usage note: “utilize” =/= “use” If I were to dig holes in the ground with a tractor and PTO auger, then that would be a case of USING the auger (that is, for its intended purpose). If I were to effectively and efficiently bore a hole in a tree with it, I would be UTILIZING it (for a purpose for which it was not designed or intended). BTW, attempting to effectively and efficiently bore a hole in a tree with a tractor-powered auger would seem a bit. . . silly, at best, and probably doomed to failure. _Utilizing things is a hacker’s gig.

In my experience, people who misuse “utilize” when they describe an action to which “use” applies are usually subliterate, pretentious twats. (YMMV, of course.) Such persons’ misuse is creeping slowly, a bit at a time, into dictionaries, though, further impoverishing English by blurring clear and very useful distinctions, as has already been done with more and more words as the democratic subliteracy of the Internet accelerates pejoration and even outright destruction of useful meanings. (Simple example of destruction of meaning is the most prominent use nowadays of the word invented by Richard Dawkins to refer to “a parallel between the way that genetic information propagates in the gene pool and the way that cultural information is transmitted through a culture.” Nowadays, most usage of the word refers to graphics with pithy captions attempting to make the leap to widespread cultural transmission. *cough* #ICanHazCheeseburger *cough*)

(Note: utilize can also refer to effective and efficient uptake of a nutrient by a biological entity. In fact, that is its best, clearest use.)

I do so very much wish that at least some writers would at least head on back to a remedial English class. *sigh*

“These three people are about to find out what happened to [blank].”

“And they’re going to wish they never did.”

No, “. . .they’re going to wish they never HAD.”

*smh*

No, this isn’t a post about low-carb dieting. It’s about part of what makes reading dictionaries entertaining, even fun. “Desert” (the verb: to abandon) was derived from a different Latin root (deserere: forsake, abandon) than “desert” (the noun meaning deserving a certain treatment for one’s behavior, as in “just deserts”) was derived from a _different_ Latin term (desevire: serve well; de–~completely, sevire–serve), while “desert” (the noun meaning wasteland, wilderness, barren area) was derived from the same Latin root as the verb meaning to abandon.

And “dessert,” of course has nothing to do with any of the meanings of “desert” noted above, although it is pronounced similarly to ONE of the words spelled “desert.”

Yeh, reading dictionaries is just plain fun. ? Also, as James D. Nicoll has so infamously noted, “We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

GOOD dictionaries can unlock these words, provide linguistic and even historical context, and thus greatly enrich one’s experience of English, both spoken and written. Why more folks don’t read dictionaries for pleasure, I just can’t fathom.