The other day I was surfing around inside Facebook and saw a post that was created by my 14-yr old daughter. One of her older high-school friends made a comment on her post and in the comment she said this, “…I want to no all about it…”. Â I made the remark to my daughter how disappointing it was that this high school student didn’t even know the difference between ‘no’ and ‘know’. Â My daughter said, ‘Oh, it’s just Facebook.’
I can’t really explain just why that bothered me, but it did. I am getting old, it’s true. And I know that as the generations get older they complain about the generations following them. Â Nothing new there. So I guess it is to be expected. But it just bothers me that little things like grammar don’t seem to mean much to kids today.
Maybe I am just overly concerned with being ‘correct’. Â Am I being too picky about this or what? Â I mean, it is just wrong to use the word ‘no’ when the correct word is ‘ know’. It’s not like there is even a debate about that. Â If this kid grows up to be my doctor, I certainly hope that she spells my medication properly on the prescription, you know? Â Then I hear the argument that ‘well, it is just the informal way that young people communicate today, and they won’t do that when they get into the workplace.
Well, I can tell you that I have a bunch of  young people who work for me, and they all do this. It drives me bananas.  In formal communication they do this… bad grammar, abbreviations, etc.  Not just in texting. It is starting to spill over to all aspects of their lives, and I don’t know what can be done about it.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe I am just being a cratchety old man. Maybe I shouldn’t care, I mean, is the world really in trouble just because she used the word ‘no’ when the correct word was ‘know’?  Is all hope lost just because my daughter sees nothing wrong with it? No, I don’t guess all hope is lost.
But she better get my prescription right. I don’t want to start growing hair on my elbows or something.
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Amen, Steve!
I have 2 teenage boys (and a 12yr old) and I’m always frustrated by their grammar. Sometimes I’ll poke fun at them on their pages just to try and make a point…although their reaction is similar to what you experienced…”It’s just FaceBook”. Then I notice that many of my old high school friends (cough*mid 40’s*cough) are doing it as well.
I’ve caught myself doing it in professional emails and am glad that I try to proofread everything I send out and I correct those.
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I have two teenage boys (13 and 15) and spelling couldn’t be less important to them. In fact, my now 13 year old told me when he was only 6 that spelling wasn’t important because Microsoft Word would just correct his mistakes anyway.
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Totally agree guys! I am an IT professional and many times I think technology causes more problems than it solves!
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I completely agree. I hate emails and Facebook postings that are grammatically incorrect and/or spelled wrong. It makes it hard to understand and it makes the writer look dumb. And it’s not just teenagers. I see people my age doing it as well. I saw a posting that was so grammatically incorrect, I couldn’t even discern her meaning or intention.
But since we’re on the topic (sorry to nitpick and be critical) …. In the third paragraph, where you said, “Am I being to picky about this or what?” – I think you meant to write “too picky”.
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Sigh. Dorothy, that mistake wasn’t because I am lazy. It was because I didn’t spell check correctly! Thanks for catching it.
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I am the CEO of SocialShield and we provide monitoring services for parents with young kids on Facebook. I also have kids aged 17, 14, and 12. I was initially worried about this but my 14 yr old daughter speaks two languages. One is how she talks online, the other is how she talks in the real world. They use all sorts of slang, abbreviations, and profanitiy online but I never hear a word of it offline at family events, outings, etc. So I believe and accept that they have a dual language just like we all probably did when we were their age. I would get concerned it it carried over into the real world but so far it has now. BTW an independend study recently showed that over half of Facebook walls contained profanity, but I’ll be you the majority of the kids making those posts are polite as can be in public.
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Well, being a grown adult myself with grammar issues, I try my best to correct myself if I see an error in any social media posting. However, when I write blog posts I free-write then when I’m done I go through and do the best I can to correct things myself. I’m still very skittish about my ability to do this properly so my wife, a grammar pro, takes a look sometimes, makes changes and proceeds to try and get me to understand the changes she’s made—love you honey. 🙂
I will say, it is not just youngsters doing this; I see it happening with people of all ages, all over the place. I remember when I was in high school in my English class we used to have to bring in newspaper articles that showed incorrect grammar usage or spelling errors. Wonder if this exercise is still done with today’s kids? Could be helpful….