I have just ordered a book and I have stolen the title for the name of this post.

The book, named ‘Death Sentence’, is by Don Watson and is about, as the title suggests, the death of the sentence – http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/don-watson/death-sentence-the-decay-of-public-language-9781740512787.aspx – or, as the sub-title puts it, ‘the decay of public language’.

Maybe later I will write about the book (I haven’t got it yet) but I wanted to comment on the appalling state of our language, in particular the appalling spelling of it and more to the point the spelling used on the internet, where many of us do much of our reading.

I understand that there are those who have learning difficulties and so this is not targetted at those who have genuine problems with learning our complex language, rather it is aimed at those who are too lazy; who can’t be bothered getting it right.  And with the availability of spell checking technology there isn’t much of an excuse to get it so terribly wrong.  Poor language/spelling is, to me, a breach of contract with your reader, assuming you want one.  It makes your reader do all the work that you ought to have done when you wrote your message.

Looking to buy a car has revealed such blunders as “tidey” for tidy, “ruber” for rubber, “duel” for dual, “veihcle” for vehicle, “moter” for motor and “coluor” for colour.  And that was in just a few minutes of looking.  All of these mistakes have a red line under them as I type which ought to give the writer a clue.  Unless they are clueless of course.

I went to school a while back, it’s true.  And we had spelling hammered into us (for which I am thankful), but in just a couple of generations, with the support of real-time spell checking, we lost the plot.  How come?