Welcome to The Blog, an extension to the Jaymac Graphics website which has been quite some time in the planning. I hope you will enjoy the result and will find the content interesting, useful and topical – perhaps, even amusing.
Pretty much every successive generation deplores what they perceive as the progressive deterioration in the English language. ‘I don’t know what they teach them in schools these days,’ we mutter, stabbing an irate forefinger at some piece of poor grammar or misplaced apostrophe in the local free newspaper. ‘It wasn’t like that in my day; they taught us how to spell and punctuate properly!’
As a former Grammar School girl, I have a lot of sympathy with this point of view. I, too, fulminate at the ubiquitous use of ‘it’s’ instead of ‘its’. I think that Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots and Leaves) and I were probably separated at birth. I have been known to physically alter public notices and to ‘red pen’ offending menus. I have sent corrected publicity back to the originators and pinged critical emails to unsuspecting website owners.
But, at the end of the day, when all’s said and done, does it really matter if we begin our sentences with a conjunction, or pepper our writing with clichés? If we misuse ‘literally’, or ‘beg the question’ when we shouldn’t, or don’t know the difference between ‘compliment’ and ‘complement’? Is it not true that we do, probably, get the idea of what has been written anyway, despite the so-called errors? And that our frantic attempts to retain the ‘purity of the language’ are nothing but vain, Canute-like attempts to prevent the growth and change that every living language needs?
Deep questions indeed. Fundamental ones which I – and possibly the odd guest writer – will attempt to get to grips with over the coming weeks and months, along with all sorts of other, I hope, interesting and thought-provoking language and writing-related subjects.
Thank you for joining me – I hope you enjoy reading The Blog as much as I aim to enjoy writing it!