Is English Dead?

Every time I moan my way through a stack of poorly punctuated papers, I have to wonder if grammar and punctuation, the nuts and bolts of the English language, are dead. In this world of e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, and, yes, blogging, punctuation no longer seems to have a place in writing. There is a generation of students who have grown up on the world wide web that do not know how to properly use a semicolon, a comma, or, believe it or not, a period. Sadly, they don't care because they don't see the necessity of proper punctuation. This lack of concern for proper punctuation in our society is just an indicator of a bigger problem: a growing number of people can no longer communicate clearly in writing.

Now, I'll grant that where punctuation is concerned I am what Lynne Truss, the author of Eat, Shoots and Leaves, refers to as a "stickler." For example, it bothers me when, at the end of a sentence, people put the period outside closing quotation marks (as they do in Britain) rather than inside closing quotation marks (as we do in the United States). It bothers me when people use semicolons in places that only commas should go. The most inexcusable errors—at least on my list of punctuation problems—are the wide variety of ways in which the ellipsis is misused: as an em dash because the writer doesn't know how to use an em dash to set off a long appositive or an abrupt thought; as a comma because the writer wants a more dramatic pause; or, as a random pause to indicate to the reader that the writer is not sure what to write next and needs a moment to think—on paper! Those who do know the ellipsis is used to indicate that words have been omitted from a quotation or to indicate a pause in speech, often don't format it correctly (in MLA formatting, it is a series of three or four spaced dots, not an indeterminate number of consecutive periods). Then again, I am a stickler.

For most students, these are errors that do not matter. Why should they? These errors are minor when compared to the magnitude of bad spelling and the abuse of acronyms and shorthand that can be seen on the internet. Look at customer reviews for any product on the internet, and numerous mistakes will be found. Look at memos, e-mails, and instant messages that circulate daily in businesses throughout the United States and be amazed that these businesses are able to function at all.

These same mistakes are present in the English classrooms of today. When I ask my students to write in complete sentences, I often get gems like these: "Cause Chaucer was the first major english poet."; "Shakespeare would be nothing w/o Petrach b/c he was the first to write sonnets about love & faith.” The students protest every time I take two points off their grades for these mistakes. When I hand back papers with little red circles dotting the pages, invariably, the question I get is this: "Mr. Warren, why do we have to write out the words?" I have to remind them that they are in an English class and that I expect them to use complete words, complete sentences, and proper punctuation. I have to explain to them that they are not text-messaging a friend.

Another issue that is muddling the writing of many in this country is the inability—or the disinclination—to revise, edit, and proofread their own work. In our instant gratification society, many people fail to look twice at their work, sending out poorly written e-mails and blogs for all the world to see. Once these hastily crafted pieces leave the desktops of these would-be-Shakespeares, they are permanent reminders to the world that say, "I can't write well!"

This problem, too, can be seen in English classrooms. It seems that no matter how many times I stress the need for revising, editing, and proofreading, my students can't be bothered with writing the same paper twice. Even if they do, they don't know the difference between the three processes. They don't understand that revising a paper means looking critically at and determining if what they've written is worth writing, and if so, have they expressed their thoughts as clearly as possible? They don't understand that editing is a process of looking for the best word choices, cutting out needless or repetitious words, or rearranging sentences for clarity. After the first two steps of the process have been completed, proofreading is simply checking over the final paper for errors in punctuation or spelling before turning it in; this is just one more concept they don't get. No, they understand revising, editing, and proofreading to mean correcting, without any curiosity as to why they are making the corrections, whatever part of their paper I have marked with my bloody red pen. Always in a hurry, they want to be done with the assignment, so they can move on to the next one.

I wish that I could take all of the blame for my students' poor writing abilities, but lunchtime conversation amongst my colleagues often turns to a discussion of the dismal state of student writing. At teacher conferences, I hear other teachers from across the country complain about the same problems. The consensus is that our current government's education policy is forcing school districts to teach to a standardized test. Yes, we do have to have some uniform way to measure student progress; most teachers will agree with that.

However, what most English teachers that I have talked to disagree with are the skills emphasized on the writing portions of these standardized tests. In Texas, the TAKS test emphasizes "voice" in student writing. Essay readers are encouraged to overlook grammar and punctuation errors unless they are so egregious that they hinder any understanding of the essay. Instead, readers are encouraged to award points for voice. What good is voice if it isn't clearly understandable through the proper use of conventions? That is the sole purpose of grammar and punctuation: to make a writer's thoughts clear and easy to follow. Unfortunately, many English teachers feel pressured to teach only the skills emphasized on the test, and by doing so, let the little things like spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure fall by the wayside on the path to voice. To make matters worse, some school districts are now using monetary incentives to garner better results from teachers. According to Ralph Blumenthal, in his New York Times article on 13 January 2006, the Houston ISD school board actually passed a merit pay raise program that ties teachers' pay raises directly to their students' test scores. In recent years, similar programs have been implemented in Denver, New York, and Kentucky.

If we fail to rigorously correct errors in conventions, if we accept the shortcuts that have become so prevalent in our language, if we continue to publish the unrevised ramblings of our inner-souls, and if we continue to teach to tests that emphasize voice rather than the actual skills necessary to write clearly, then English as we know it will die or morph into something ugly and unrecognizable. I know—English is a living language that has been evolving since its origins in Anglo-Saxon times, but do we really want a language that is composed solely of acronyms and symbols? Do we really want a language that is devoid of standard conventions that help us clearly communicate in writing? Do we really want a language in which the ellipsis has replaced all other punctuation? If so, we are emphasizing what we don't say, rather than what we do.

A thanks goes to LaDonna Rushing for editing and contributing to this article.