"The Importance of Vowels"

Right off the bat I'm frosted this morning, and not due to outside temperatures, to be sure! When I first awake with the dawns early light, usually I catch the end of "Wings" or "Becker" (by the way, in case you didn't know this, my TV stays on all night long.....). When it goes to a commercial and if I am awake enough, I'll switch over Fox and Friends to see what has happened overnight.

Much to my dismay, nearly every time I went to the news, the conversation was not about news, but rather ridiculous stuff such as the "big" story today: An English teacher somewhere (if I were actually watching, I'd know from where!) has determined that certain words would be okay improperly spelled. What? He or she is giving a pass to students who misspell commonly misspelled words, surrendering to, what?, society? Thank you, text messaging, for ruining everything!!!!!!!

My blogging friend, Jami, again with the Jami reference, is a counselor in a TX prison. One of her first postings after returning to work following surgery was about starting a new program to help her inmates learn to read. Jami remarked helping these fellows face their greatest regrets, including never finishing school and/or learning how to read! This might lead them to a life of crime, out of frustration or whatever. I cannot even imagine not being able to read or write. Jami was going to teach some of them the alphabet and the "importance of vowels". That phrase just struck me.

On one hand, it could be a great scenario in a "Seinfeld" coffee shop discussion, deciding which would be the most important vowel.....But, on the serious side, continued lowering of standards in our children's education, due in part, I believe, to the advancement of text messaging and abbreviations, is a horrendous, horrendous mistake! As are run-on sentences!!!!

Of course, the anchor team was quick to throw out their most commonly misspelled words and admitted to some grievous errors, including "enuf", "expecially", "speach". Then, one of them remarked about "Spell Check" catching the errors so kids aren't learning or having to learn how to spell correctly because of the reliance on the machine for repairing poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling. It never occurred to these folks to mention the fact that sometimes we actually use a pen and a piece of paper to write things, and there is no spell check button to press. At one of the Writer's Conferences I heard an editor speak to the matter of submitting a manuscript and she exhorted the writers to edit their own work plus let another person edit it, stating that Spell Checker is an Editor's worst nightmare!!!!

The female anchor commented that if she had an applicant in front of her and had misspellings and errors in the resume, she'd stop reading there and then, sending them on their way. For this I rejoice! I do hold the text messaging craze to blame for the serious lack of proper spelling, since "texting" totally eliminates the use of vowels, substituting consonants to complete full sentences, most of them warnings about their parents watching over their shoulder!!!! I hate it! Really? I wouldn't have known!!!

One of my neighbors is a psychologist (this is a word I like to misspell!) and was talking to me about the term papers and such she has to write as part of her business. She expressed not being able to get used to using or reading contractions. This was totally news to me! I have never really had to submit a paper for anything and simply do not (don't) recall there being a rule about when and when not to use a contraction. Am I also guilty of disregarding the importance of vowels? I never met a contraction I didn't like! And punctuation rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Forget about it!