Bad Language.

A couple years ago, I started noticing a trend spreading like gangrene through the healthy limbs of language.  People were brazenly switching adjectives for adverbs without even blinking an eye.  Did they do it because they didn't know the difference?  Or was it because they simply did not care?  Either way, I found this annoying -- like stepping in a wet spot on the kitchen floor in my socks.  So in my angst, I sat down and poured out my emotions through poetry like any feeling artist would.

Death of the Adverb

How sudden he went.
No one saw how or when
but the thing about it was that no one cared either,
just a few professors weeping soft into their graying beards
and a handful of editors, pens tucked behind ears,
hands shoved in pockets, heads bowed in defeat.

People were too busy texting short acronyms on cell phones
or talking to one another in coded slang
to notice his form lying lifeless in a pool of grammatical blood.
They sidestepped him with detached disinterest
as they went on their ignorant way -- swift and not swiftly --
shrugging at the minuscule difference.

His distant cousin, the Adjective, stepped up to the plate
and tried his best, but he did it rather poor.
At least, it seemed that way for those select few readers
sitting on warm nights who continued to incline their heads to listen
for the Adverb’s signature step and the patter of the “l” and “y”
that usually followed him like small, obedient dogs on a leash.

With a sigh they returned listless to the books opened in their laps
feeling like something was missing -- something important --
when only the sound of crickets replied, a cacophony weighing heavy
on the still air outside their small windows
that framed a night that somehow seemed larger,
a darkness that crept a little closer to their doors.

"Language is wine upon the lips," Virginia Woolf once wrote.  I love wine and I love the wine of language!  I don't want the heady liquid of diction to become a poisonous draught of misused words.  Am I being a little dramatic?  Yes, of course.  But far from the lies of the childhood ditty, Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me, is the truth that words can cut a man to his innermost being and they can inspire him to be greater than he knew he could ever be.  I do not believe that the English language will collapse in a great avalanche of ten syllable words and forgotten phrases, rather I feel that it will crack little by little if we allow our mediocrity about its usage to turn it into a shadow of what it once was.

So, care!  Learn the difference and teach the difference.  Speak and write with eloquence.  Understand what you speak; know why it is either correct or why it is an oral abomination.  Don't know where to start?  I have a few suggestions that will teach and entertain you.  After all, "With every job that must be done, there is an element of fun!"  (I had to bring a little Mary Poppins into this, didn't I?)

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a brilliant and hilarious book about grammar.  (Yes, I did just use hilarious and grammar in the same sentence.)  This is not a text book, but you will be so caught up in Lynne Truss's piquant wit that you will fly through the book without realizing that you're actually learning something.  For example, the crucial difference between, "Let's eat, Grandpa" and "Let's eat Grandpa" -- a seemingly minor detail to you, but one that Grandpa would be eager to tell you is anything but innocuous.

Have trouble with words?  Try Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting it Right by Bill Bryson.  Not necessarily a read-cover-to-cover book, but it is very handy as a reference tool.  Bryson outlines the difference between commonly misused words (like adverse and averse or affect and effect) and misapplied words (like adage: "Even the most careful users of English frequently, but unnecessarily, refer to an 'old adage.' An adage is by definition old.") He has the gift of being humorous and informative without boring you to tears.


That should give you a decent start.  Happy reading and long live the adverb!