Copyright © 2010 Jorge M Vega
Sad, but true. Just about everywhere you look online, the
English language is suffering a fate worse than death. The
problem, in reality, is so widespread that it has begun to
affect all aspects of the language. 'But, what on Earth does
this have to do with Internet marketing?' you may be
asking. Well, my fellow netpreneur...Everything!
It has everything to do with Internet marketing if you wish
to portray yourself, and be perceived as, a Marketing
Professional on the internet. Just remember, professionally
speaking, Image is Everything. On the other hand, if you're
not particularly interested in putting your 'best foot
forward' when marketing your services or products, and I
really hope this is not the case, then none of this applies
to you.
Obviously, we don't have time here to do an in-depth study
of the many instances of, what I would term, 'casual
disdain' I've witnessed online. So, in order to illustrate
my point, I'll concentrate on a small, but vital component
of the English language: the innocent, harmless apostrophe.
Allow me to try to paint a picture for you. A long, long,
time ago, around the time of the De Soto, the Corvair,
bellbottoms, the VW 'bug' (ring a bell?), and before
beatniks became known as hippies, you could look at
advertisement copy and expect, to some degree, that it had
been reviewed and, presumably, corrected.
In other words, it was safe for women, children, and other
life forms to view it, and read its content without
suffering any permanent, debilitating psychological damage,
such as a hard to diagnose speech impediment, or maybe an
involuntary nervous twitch across one cheek.
What I see most of us doing now, at the dawn of the 21st
Century, is that we read ad copy, and then, because it's in
bold letters on carefully selected background, surrounded
by pretty pictures, we accept its message as Gospel truth.
We get so bowled over by the 'look' of it, that we forget
to examine it critically enough.
Talk about your viral strategy, indeed...
Today, in the age of the cell phone, the Lexus, Viagra, the
twenty five cent phone call, and a PC 'in every barn,'
wherever I look, I see the poor apostrophe maligned and
misused. It gets no respect, either offline on signs,
billboards, and late-night Infomercials, or (shudder)
online in cyber country, on that very personal and intimate
expression of its owner's taste and personality: an
individual's web site.
Since I spend so much time online, much more, I think, than
I spend on the real pavement of our world, I notice the
glaring mistreatment heaped upon our poor little fellow-
the apostrophe-by careless webmasters, even more. The main
thing I notice is that the apostrophe's originally intended
use is slowly eroding; people are just making up their own
versions of what its purpose really is. This is a prime
example of what I mean by 'casual disdain.'
It's been reported in 'The Really Up Yonder Gazette', an
influential publication dedicated to digging up gossip
about the well known dearly departed, that both William
Shakespeare and John Milton have thrown up their arms in
despair, and are contemplating turning their backs for good
on something that some would consider their own creation:
our English language.
As a matter of fact, in a recent exclusive interview,
'Willie boy' himself bemoans the effect all of this is
having on his favorite language, as follows:
'Oh, perfidy that has befallen our instrument of
expression, by us once nearly refined. Oh, treachery
flung upon us by the masses shamelessly disdainful of
reading and writing, of independent thought evidently
incapable!'
Ahem...
Frankly, I firmly believe that this unwarranted offense was
perpetrated by one of the first guys, if not the very
first, who threw up that first Web site selling, say,
floppy disks with instructions on how to extend the mileage
on single-ply bathroom tissue by rewashing it, carefully
drying it with your wife's hair dryer (when she'd gone out
of the house, natch), and then gingerly covering it with a
special jelly for sofness. You know, just your average
3-Step Recycling Process used mainly in Third World
countries like Wyoming, for instance...
For the purposes of this little tale, let's call this first
marketer, Butcher D. Grammer.
Well, this confounded fellow started something which has
become a movement, or a new language convention. Butcher
decided that the little fellow, my friend the apostrophe,
should not be used according to any rules or previous
language conventions; heck no, the little fellow would,
according to our Bathroom Recycle Consultant, be used any
ol'time.
He would use it, and so would the masses who were yet to
come, but who would follow suit, and our Butcher knew this
well, to interchangeably indicate either the possessive or
the plural forms in any sentence.
So, a sentence such as, 'The seller does not guarantee its
potential profit,' became: 'The seller does not guarantee
it's potential profit.'
Here he turned the possessive form of 'its' into the
abbreviated, or the contraction form of, it is. So, if you
were to read the second sentence, removing the contraction,
the last part would read: 'does not guarantee it is
potential.'
But, our little Butcher, a thorough and disciplined
craftsman, was not through yet. After all, there was even
more damage he could inflict on American English; and,
leeringly, he mused, rubbing his hands together, 'They'll
follow me blindly anywhere.'
Next, he turned his attention to the plural form of simple
words. Just about any word ending in 's,' indicating that
there was more than one object of whatever unit was being
counted or measured, he turned into, you guessed it, the
possessive form.
Words or terms such as, buyers, software tools, ingrown toe
nails, battering ramps, fools, attractive girls,
dumb-as-can-be-guys, and many, many others, became:
buyer's, software tool's, ingrown toe nail's, battering
ramp's, fool's, attractive girl's, dumb-as-can-be-guy's.
As hard to believe as it may seem, Butcher reign of terror
is still not only alive and well, but from what I'm going
to show you, it's expanding frighteningly. Please have a
look at the following three additional examples, and cringe
in terror:
1. If your interested, just sign up from the link below.
2. Just click here, and your done.
3. Simply load email address's into your auto-responder.
Obviously, in the first two sentences, Butcher and his
followers have cleverly used the second-person possessive
pronoun 'your' as a substitute for the abbreviated
'you're.' Their thinking being, 'The heck with that
comma-like thing which is supposed to go on top. Nobody
will even miss it. And, we can get away with chopping off
the last 'e', also.' (So, once again, the apostrophe gets
the shaft).
As regards the third sentence shown above, quite frankly, I
have no comment; I wouldn't even know where to begin
defining or deciphering it...I'm afraid to look at it. It's
just a stroke of genius from the hand of our hero, Butcher,
who must have found the inspiration for this little morcel
during a wrenching psychotic episode.
Now, I don't know how other people feel about the sinister,
pervasive, and, yes, viral damage caused by this one crazy
guy, but I, for one, hope he has gone to his final resting
place. Let him drive them crazy over there if (God forbid)
he finds himself near a typewriter; as it is, Butcher's
handiwork makes me go nuts practically every day here in
cyber space.
If only we could go back to that time in the past, 1962
comes readily to mind for one reason or another, when
spelling and a little attention to grammar counted for
something.
But, as they say, in Bolivia, 'Dude, t'ain't no use
complainin', 'dem 'dere day's is long gone.'
------
After struggling for years trying to figure out what worked and what didn't work online, the author, Jorge M. Vega, has started to 'bring home the bacon' marketing on the Internet. Quietly, he has found a few select, sure-fire ways that anyone can use to begin making a comfortable home-based living, starting today:
http://www.earnlarge.com/pbi
|
|
|
last viewed articles
