#Editing the media...I'm losing my mind!

When did it become okay to misspell, incorrectly punctuate, and use incorrect English when writing articles or news casting? I use my phone for FB and apologize when auto correct thinks I meant something entirely different than what I accidentally SENT. Uhm, bloggers, edit yourselves. Huffington Post, edit yourself. CNN, edit yourself. All media...I beg you, edit the swill from the people you put in front of the camera and a microphone. Give them the freedom of speech, but please, make certain it's spoken correctly. These aren't aliens--illegal or otherwise. These are "Made in the USA" citizens, born and raised.

I'm ranting about grammar and the media. Reading editorial blunders is one thing... Someone wrote it wrong, and someone edited it incorrectly. Inexcusable. But most mistakes like that aren't being seen by millions on social media or TV instantaneously. It's not bad enough that we condense for text messages and Twitter, or that education in our schools is suffering, but when the only role models who people see are the newscasters, celebrities, or politicians speaking "incorrectly," I take issue. "Paying someone who uses incorrect or lazy grammar in front of a TV camera and microphone should be a felony," says this grammar police person!

Today an attorney (I assume she went to college, attended law school, and perhaps even passed the bar) was being interviewed about an attack that took place recently. "...they drugged the man's body into the middle of the street..." Ouch! My grammar ears screamed.

Really? They may have "drugged" the man and "dragged" his body...but drug is not the past tense of drag. Drug is usually a noun and drag is a verb. Now, I understand some may call this colorful dialect, but it's difficult to teach our children proper grammar when they hear it used incorrectly over and over again by people who should be setting a better example.

Another common problem I hear is subject-verb disagreement. I understand confusion over the comma, colon, semi-colon and ellipsis, but plural means more than one. Not rocket science. ...And hear this...the contraction for "There are his shoes." is "There're his shoes." not "There's his shoes." Probably shouldn't contract it anyway.

If we can't pay unemployed English teachers to teach in schools, I know the media has a need and the money to pay them to edit! There are teleprompters out there, people. Write it correctly or at least edit it before you read it. How difficult can that be?

My next rant may include self-published "unedited" manuscripts that claim to be books. And I'm not referring to the occasional typo, missing or misused word. The written word is sacred. Be very careful how it's represented.

I'm climbing off my high horse to go use some local, colorful, dialect.

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