Literacy

New age, modern times, XXI century - today, man! We're cool, we're tolerant (more likely just politically correct), we take what we want when we want it and the sky is our limit... Well, the sky and spelling decently. (Before I go on, I apologise if I make any typing mistakes myself, but that should just prove my point.)

One of the best accomplishments during the late XIX and the early XX century is the increased literacy. People who could read and write became no longer wizards with dark knowledge about truth and God, but normal people. It became trivial, usual, something daily. There were cafés where people would read newspapers and talk about art, music, politics (and booze, women and cars/horses, of course).

Today, well... I want you to do an exercise for me. I want you to go to your e-mail or phone inbox, or facebook account and take a look. Take a good look at the comments, the SMSes, the replies.

I don't really need to show you what's the problem now, do I? Of course, it's an improvement compared to the Middle Age, when most of the people used axes instead of pens, but what bothers me is that today, nobody perceives bad spelling as a problem. Reading books is boring, saying that there is a difference between "your" and "you're" is nerdy. What happened to the awe people felt for those who read and write, the respect that the intelligent deserve (just like any other type of people who put effort into something)?

And this is a worldwide issue. No matter if you're English, American, French, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish or Guatemalan, you are aware of this. Nobody's doing a thing about it - we complain about everything else, but we don't complain about bad spelling. Old people keep saying, "Back in our days...", parents complain about today's children, the children talk about the "uncool", but nobody even mentions the literacy issue. The government isn't, for sure - fuck, why would they want intelligent people who could objectively criticise their programs? I'm not saying that the government is deliberately making us illiterate, we are, but they sure as hell wouldn't bother helping either.

In French, instead of "ne t'inquiètes pas" (don't worry), people write "tkt". In English, "plx" is the new please. In Bulgarian, people just nod with their head instead of saying "come on".

This isn't unrelated with the literacy. A lot of people can say that they write like that and speak like that, but they know how to spell right. To those, I need to ask just one question. How many times do we need to repeat a lie in order for it to become truth?

And what about eloquence? You know, "complicated" words. If we don't bother writing in full the simple words, why wouldn't we simply stop using the eloquent ones?

I know that eloquence isn't always needed. I hate purple prose (that's prose riddled with failing attempts to use complicated language when simple words are enough). But I like how before, eloquence was a quality. I fear about that word's status at the moment.

In one of those "hip" magazines, a guy had said, "I've heard about people who read, but I've never met any." Now, I'm not quite sure if there's really such a guy. I pray to all kinds of deities that there isn't. The magazine published it, though. They wanted to publish it. They've searched for (or lied about) this individual.

This statement would please their audience.

To me, writing as well as you can is more than just showing that you can. It's more than just wasting a couple of precious seconds. It's also attention to your friends - it's giving them respect. Its like saying, "I would give you the attention needed to spell 'please' fully." Even more than that - it's self-respect. It's projecting your image of yourself. Are you a person that spells fully or not? It's one of the first impressions that you can make to a person. In a written format, your spelling becomes you.

I would understand if people don't spell correctly because of a lack of vanity, if they can't bother to give the attention to their replies and to the other party, I can understand that. What I can't understand is that we don't want to write properly any more.

It's reached such a point that we don't put even a few seconds of thought into it. We're not thinking about it, it's something we do automatically. That's what bothers me.