Why Being a Fuddy-Duddy isn't all Bad

by Joshua "Darien" Maciel

Yes, I'm only 20. Yes, I should be youthful at heart and remember that not everyone is an adult. Yes, what will follow this little disclaimer will be seen as a bunch of fudd-duddery from an old fuddy-duddy who shouldn't be so old.

I care about grammar. With that said, I can continue. There are lots of instances in life where grammar counts; the most obvious is a job resume. A resume is supposed to be perfect. Many times, people who are in charge of hiring will disregard a resume if they see a typo (oftentimes even if it is over one page in length). The point is that grammar is not an outdated rule with no application in today's society of keyboards and speedy typing.

This does extend into editorials. Editorials, while not resumes, should be as important to you for your own personal enrichment. I assume that you care about what you're writing when you write it. In fact, I think that you care much more about an editorial written in the heat of a moment, in that fit of passion, than you ever could about something you're just going to photocopy and send off to zillions of potential employers. And editorial, after all, is quite personal -- you're only sending it one place.

It would follow logically (though the world is in no way bound by the rules of logic) that you would then be more careful with your grammar. You would check spelling, read over what you'd written in order to check it for mistakes. Heck, you'd even have a friend read it and make sure that it makes sense. As Xenochick points out however, sometimes people don't want to read just another rant.

I'm going to take a leap of faith here, and assume that each and every one of you has Microsoft Word. You can easily just type your editorial in there, and it will help weed out those typoes, repeated words and such for you. Then your editorial wouldn't be written in code. We could tell what you were trying to say without needing to decipher what you were trying to say through the guise of careless mistakes ("If I were the author, what would I have wanted to say when I made this stupid mistake?").

(Editor's note: Well, I think he would mean a word processor with a spelling checker at least. I know there's more than MS word out there, and I know he does as well. Just remember NOT to send Word documents, Wordperfect files and the like my way though since I don't have support for most if not all of them about 70% of the time.)

I know that I've made this same complaint before, but only because I feel that it is a valid one. When you're a voiceless faceless entity on the internet, all you have to support yourself is a word. To take it to an extreme, if you use incorrect grammar and spelling, you could very well appear to most of the people who read you as an inbred hick from the depths of the Mississippi swamps who just happened upon a computer and took half a lifetime to write the editorial.

Don't be that hick. Just take the three minutes to grammar and spellcheck your editorial. Several blatant mistakes are going to hurt your argument. If you aren't willing to give your all to what you write, then ask yourself, "Why am I writing this?" Just think back to the editorials that inspired you to write, and remember that it was the well-written ones that you aspired to, not the ones you rebutted.