Did you ever wonder what would happen if your right hand was on your left arm instead of your right? Neither did I.
By the time you read this, I hope things will have settled down and we can get back to focusing on what truly matters in our lives. Things such as shoveling snow, slow Internet connections, or what’s happening on The Bachelor. For some time I’ve been concerned about the state of the written word here in the USA, especially the way it’s produced by our younger generations. Most elders probably have seen, or tried to read texts and E-mail from Gen Xers, Gen Zers, GenDeadFishers, or someone in Texas, with no capitalization, punctuation or condiments. The majority of these folkscan no longer even read or write cursive handwriting. For the sake of transparency and honesty, I do write in cursive, although I no longer can read what I’ve written.
In the current job market, or to be more precise, the jobless market, it is important to have an exceptionally well-written cover letter and résumé for consideration by a prospective employer, otherwise the employer will just highlight your submission on their screen and hit the little trash icon. If both your cover letter and résumé are well prepared with proper English, spelling and punctuation, an employer will spend considerable time looking them over, then hit the little trash icon because there are no jobs in the current market.
Don’t be afraid to insert a bit of tasteful humor, either. It can break the ice and make your submission stand out from the others. For instance, at the close of your letter you might add, “Please carefully consider me for this position, or else I will send over a pack of ravenous wolverines to rip out your gizzard. LOL!”
These English writing and punctuation skills aren’t that hard to learn because they rely on a few basic rules. Ask anyone from a foreign country who has had to learn English from scratch. You just master the basic rules, then spend the rest of your life learning all the exceptions to them. In fact, it’s possible to write a complete manifesto using only the exceptions to the rules. I’d provide an example if only I had sufficient interest. For someone with sufficient interest, the rules can be found in books by Strunk & White, Homer & Jethro, The Associated Press, Hulk Hogan, Bert & Ernie and Alfred E. Newman, to name a few.
Punctuation such as periods, commas, semi-colons, colons, colonoscopies, llama snot, rat droppings, etc., is used in sentences to keep them from being run-on or in some cases, walked-on. Here’s an example of a run-on sentence:
“I always wanted to be a gardener until one year I started a vegetable garden but critters ate all the plants so I started a rock garden but most of the rocks died so I decided to run for public office and was elected.”
See? It makes you tired reading it. Now here’s the same sentence with punctuation added:
“I always wanted to be. a gardener until, one year I started a vegetable; garden but critters ate all. the plants so I started: a rock garden (colonoscopy) but most of the rocks died *•.• (Those are rat droppings on the left) so I decided to run for? public office and —was elected (llama snot)”
Isn’t that much easier to read? The punctuation provides places to stop and take a breath, or grab a beer.
Take a tip from we boomers. We only wanted to change the world, not screw up written English. Let it be. One of our properly written and punctuated mottos was, “Never trust anyone over thirty!” That made a lot of sense. If young people today followed that logic, they wouldn’t believe individuals such as The Donald, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Joe Biden, Betty White, Mister Rogers, Oscar the Grouch…me….
Never mind.