While growing up, I heard many ads for RIF, the organization Reading Is Fundamental. Darned right it is! I thought just about everybody in the U.S. could read, simply because of my experience. I never knew anybody who was illiterate until into my late fourties when I helped present an Alpha course.
However, more and more these days, I realize writing should be fundamental as well, or...well..."WIF". Maryvale (in Cheektowaga, NY, US) has taught me well, as I think most of the public education institutions in my era have. Unfortunately, I think that standards have slipped dramatically. It seems fewer and fewer people are able to identify parts of speech properly, and realize for what each is supposed to be used. A huge example is the blurring of the use of adjectives and adverbs. So many want to press adjectives into an adverbial role.
For a starting example, let's take an organization which should know better: Apple. "Think different", so they say. No! It's supposed to be "think differently." You're commanding me (imperative tense) to modify how I'm doing something (thinking), which requires an adverb. Adjectives are not supposed to fill that role, but apparently people are getting mentally lazy (or, I don't know, maybe they were just poorly educated).
The same applies so many times to how the word "slow" is used by many. "This line is moving so slow." Ummmm, no, it is moving slowly. Again, to me, there is no doubt about it, the words being modified are "is moving", which demands an adverb.
Look...I'm not against language evolution. Years ago, "googol" was only a noun. When what is now Alphabet decided to morph that into their product name, "Google," that was still just a noun. Eventually, "googling," a verb, came to mean the same thing as using a World Wide Web search engine, roughly speaking probably using Google, but could be another such as Yahoo!, Bing, Duck Duck Go, or others. That's a perfectly understandable evolution of language, but the principal difference is that it really doesn't break any syntax or grammar rules.
Before you say something like "you know what I mean (or meant)", or "you're just being pedantic," please check my ".sig" block. To me, the more closely we follow the well-established rules, the less we will have ambiguity of expression to one another, and hopefully the least misunderstandings. It might be an extreme example, but what if we did talk to our kids badly, like in Steve Martin's little comedy bit? When we just make it up as we go along, not bothering to follow the rules, we will be misunderstanding each other more and more, thereby causing more tensions, mistrust, and so much more, which would be unnecessary had we only been more careful.
I will cite another example from the elections which were held a few months ago, where the Republican challenger sent out a mailing to me which was in "randomcaps" as I like to call it. It must have been the author just thought "it looked good" to have almost every word capitalized. "You know what he meant;" yes, I really did. There are a few places words should be capitalized: titles, proper nouns, the pronoun "I" and so on. Your instances were not places where any rule applied. If you're unwilling to supervise your promotional staff properly so that you send out English instead of quasi-English mail, what else am I going to see from you that is written poorly? I would rather abstain from the election than vote for you.
As it turns out, my vote would not have mattered in the least; he got trounced by the incument Democrat.
That brings me to the mail piece I received today which caused me to start writing this post: the NY registration for the used vehicle I purchased recently. (As an aside, I do not know why the NYS DMV sent it to West Herr instead of to me directly, thus West Herr needing to spend some of money on an envelope, postage, and somebody's time to stuff that envelope. I know, it's not even a drop but only a few molecules in the bucket compared to the money I gave them for the car, but still...it's the principle.) On the back of the window sticker portion of the registration, Erie County Clerk Michael P. Kearns put his own sticker on it, proclaiming "RENEW LOCAL." Guess what, Mickey? No, I won't. I will be renewing directly with the State. Why? "RENEW LOCALLY", that's why. Plus, why are you spending money on these stickers?
Why, o why, are we not more selective with our elected officials? We should be holding them to the highest standards. I'll just close by asking this question: If you sent out that mailing with (the right capitalization, the adverb), how many people do you think would be inclined to say it should have been sent out as you had sent it out, versus the number of people like me who see you not following the rules, and therefore refuse to do what you asked? Since you would have been following the well-established rules, I'll bet the number of people refusing due to not knowing the rules would be far smaller. So you might as well hire someone who knows what they're doing.
English is a difficult enough language to interpret correctly when its rules are followed, let alone when the speaker or writer chooses not to follow those rules.
"Jeopardy!" replies and randomcaps really suck!