We Demand Gooder Grammar!

Having a B.A. in communications puts one on the defensive since it invites greater scrutiny from others. But it also puts one on the offensive: Fighting the good fight against the decline of the Mother Tongue can be exhausting.    

Speaking of exhausting, following a 17-year trek to my high school graduation, it took me another 17 years to get to college graduation. And my route to plotting a destination point for that final leg of the journey looked a lot like a game of Twister.

I started out as an art major, until I learned that live nude models were on tap for the next semester. Psychology sounded fascinating, until I learned that a few classes in experimental psych were required. (Lab mice? One look into those innocent, beady little pink eyes and I knew I'd either be petitioning for their freedom or trying to arrange for their adoption.)

Philosophy lured me for a year or so, allowing, as it did, for a rambling rhetorical style that came quite naturally to me at the time. But when a dear older friend said of her son, "He has a degree in, oh, what's that one that you can't do anything with?" my knee-jerk answer was "Philosophy?!" This exchange ushered in images of a future of waiting tables by day and composing unpublishable Socratic-style treatises by night.

After a bit of university-hopping, I enrolled at an institution that allows students to design their own degree program. When writing classes became the most gratifying part of that experience, I finally landed on a declaration: Written Communications Major. Because there is so much you can do with that fuzzy field of study, right?

So here I sit, a long series of entry-level positions in billing/accounts receivable behind me, my unused diploma tucked away somewhere. But since the writer's brain never fully retires, I continue to cringe at TV commercials (It's "fewer pounds," not "less pounds," and you'll walk "farther" with good arch support, not "further"). I also rage at indecipherable letters from my HOA (What in blazes is an HO6 CLTH loss assessment document?!), despair over a repetitious eleven-page hospital-volunteer application that contradicts its own instructions. And I'm just waiting for my hair to burst into flames as I listen to certain politicos toss word salads like a Benihana chef juggling grilled veggies.

You don't have to be a journalism major or an old-school English teacher to despair, as wanton abuses of vocabulary and sentence structure threaten to reduce the art of communication to a pile of rusty tintype. But, as we grimace our way through a clumsy suburban newspaper article or a painful like-studded conversation with a beloved teenage acquaintance, may we never fully surrender to the enemy.

I cling to the belief that hope resides in The Resistance. We simply need to stand together and strengthen our offensive line positions. To keep those red pencils sharpened and those thumbs on the remote's mute button.

    And maybe have the fire extinguisher handy, just in case.