Bad readers don't exist, only bad writers do

You may agree that ‘Bad readers don't exist, only bad writers do’ is a very interesting statement. It is one which, without any doubt, certainly applied before the digital age when all that was available for non-verbal communication was the printed word.

But how about now?

Well, it's possibly no longer true.

There have always been bad writers. There always will be, but sadly, these are increasing almost by the minute!

For example, it has been suggested by some literary critics that despite being a top-selling author, Dan Brown [The Da Vinci Code] is a 'bad writer'. Yet he sold millions of books which in turn were made into huge blockbuster films.

During the formative years of the late 60’s to early 70’s generation, they were taught to read, write and speak proficiently. If they didn’t, they were chided at school (that is, the wooden board duster was ‘correctively’ thrown towards offending students by the teacher) and all were certainly helped with the art of basic speaking and writing at home by parents.

Sadly, the modern-day ‘texting generation’, coupled with the likes of rappers (as in ‘singers’), destroy the written word by introducing their own fake language which, when 'published', is the equivalent of written grunting that is dumbing down and reducing reading abilities at an incredible rate of knots.

Also, youngsters are now no longer reading newspapers or books. And neither are they speaking properly. Everything they 'read' is from social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or the pointless (to the older person) Snapchat.

Over the past 30 years, the general dynamic with respect to reading and writing has totally changed. Yet, nothing has changed as far as bad writers are concerned. They are still writing as badly as ever. And there are more of them.

Nonsensical language such as using ‘journey’ for something that doesn’t involve transport – career ‘journeys’ and hairdressing ‘journeys’ for example - as well as people now ‘reaching out’ rather than emailing or phoning.

Bad readers are catching up fast. Really quite fast. The level of universal comprehension and understanding of basic English is falling. The amount of ‘real’ reading being consumed is falling. The ability of people to communicate with one another, without using profanity to give them thinking space between sentences, is falling. Their command of the English language, despite being born into an English-speaking environment, is nothing short of an embarrassment. In fact, they need a dictionary to spell the word dictionary. And while they suffer big time from the ‘there, they’re, their’ syndrome’, please don’t even attempt to go near ‘it’s’ versus ‘its’.

The argument over UK English versus American English has raged for decades. While the American spelling of some words, according to the world English word bible that is the Oxford English Dictionary, is undoubtedly wrong, words like ‘colour’ when spelled as pronounced, namely ‘color’, would appear to make sense. On the other hand, swopping the letter ‘s’ in the middle of the word and using a ‘z’ is akin to simply employing an otherwise redundant letter that serves a purpose only to help us reach the zenith of a zoo rather than zero! This is notwithstanding the fact it is we British who chose, some 200 years ago, to opt-out of using a ‘z’ in favour of using ‘s’.

And the American habit of capitalising (or as they say ‘capitalizing’) the first letter of every word in a headline is as grammatically incorrect as it is difficult to type out naturally in the first place.

Yet for some strange reason, no one seems to realise that! First letter capitalised words in a headline are actually not only unnatural to type out, but are so uncomfortable to read that one might conclude that the authors of such abominations are actually quite grammatically ignorant! It is standard practice that you do not under any circumstance (unless it starts a sentence) capitalise a verb, pronoun, adverb, adjective, conjunction or gerund.

Meanwhile, the bad speakers are catching up fast. ‘Free fings’ is their version of ‘three things’. The ‘I were’ and the ‘they was’ brigade. Those who don’t realise that the ‘t’ in ‘Britain’ is there to be pronounced and is not a silent ‘t’. Those who totally disregard the ‘g’ at the end of gerunds so they end up goin’ to places, bein’ somewhere and when they do use their brains, they do plenty of ‘finkin’ (thinking).

So yes, there will always be bad writers, but most certainly, there will certainly now be an ever-increasing band of bad readers and even worse speakers.