I guess you could say I have pet peeves, but it's not like I'm the only one. I've never really given thought to just how many pet peeves I actually have. I think most people carry around more than they realize. I couldn't possibly list all of mine here - I mean really, they would have to cover every area of my life, in every thing I do. There are probably loads of 'em that I never even realized I have.
One area that I'll openly admit to having pet peeves in, is grammar - y'know, spelling an' shit. We live in a time that seems to be making people ignore things like spelling and proper written communication. Don't ask me why I have such a problem with this - but I do. Maybe it's because I love words and writing. Maybe it's because I paid attention in English class and when people told me that I wrote well, it made me feel good. Whatever the reason, it bugs me when I see people that don't know the difference between words like "your" and "you're" or "their" and "there" - because they're not using what they sat in school for. I know it's not the end of the world, but what's the point of learning rules for written communication if they're just going to be tossed aside out of laziness?
I had someone recently comment on a social networking site that "spelling doesn't matter here" - yet for some reason it does matter to me. I'm not above a misuse of a comma, I'm in no way above a typo - hell, maybe even a lot of 'em, though when I catch my typos, I correct 'em!
We may be approaching a time when resumes get texted rather than written, where kids fill out applications for part time jobs in text speak. For all I know there may be kids out there who know more about the so-called rules of text speak than they do about even simple rules of the English language. I'll admit it, I flat out suck at texting. Part of the reason is because I like things like spelling correctly and I think that while it's advantageous to fire off a quick text, it just doesn't seem that important to shave milliseconds off the time it takes to send such a brief message.
It kind of makes me wonder if we're approaching a time when a potential employer will have a spot on an application that asks how many texts per minute a person can do. My mother used to be a secretary - secretaries use an abbreviated symbolic method called shorthand. I guess one could say that shorthand is the godfather of texting - y'know, like James Brown is the Godfather of Soul. Shorthand used to be considered essential training for secretaries and journalists. It allowed someone who knew how to use it to write as quickly as people speak. I'm not really sure I get why exactly computer speak and text speak came into play, at least not in saving time that is wasted hanging out online in a social network setting - I mean, really? You need to save time in milliseconds, in order to continue wasting time in any number of directions that time can be wasted on the Internet? Just seems silly to me.
I know people who have been using text speak long before there was such an animal. People who most likely couldn't write a simple complete sentence if their very lives depended on doing so. Then again, the English language does have some pretty messed up rules. Nonetheless, I still see something meaningful in putting forth the effort to speak and/or write well - and society getting further and further away from that is but one of my pet peeves.
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