Blast from the Past

Just came across this and thought I'd resurrect it and share it with you. It was posted to a forum in response to comments about the standards of writing we're seeing on web pages and in the popular media. I wrote it in March 2008:

I think it's very much a "you get what you pay for"
situation. Better pay = better writing. As long as
the market continues to accept poor quality
writing, purveyors will provide it at the lowest
possible cost.

We're already victims of the sleeper effect --
you see enough bad writing, you unconsciously
start to write that way yourself and your tolerance
for what is "bad" lowers, unless you maintain
constant vigilance. There are few gatekeepers
anymore. Those print editors who tormented
writers until the prose was perfect aren't around
anymore. Publishers who refused to sacrifice
quality for revenue have been eliminated by their
corporate masters in favor of increased sales.

The gap between the truly literate, meaning those
who have studied literature enough to know
what good writing looks like, and the illiterate is
widening. We're seeing this in our students whose
text messaging style permeates their academic essays.

I choose to believe that good writing and good
communication will always prevail, though fewer
will be able to recognize it.

The "sleeper effect" I'm talking about is the persistence and persuasiveness of something we see even when we give the source no credibility whatsoever. I've even found myself doing it -- typing "they're" instead of "their", and "your" or "it's" instead of the more correct "you're" and "its" in their proper context.

As a professional writer -- and a nit-picky one at that -- I know full well the difference in when to use "they're" versus "their", and so on. But because I've seen the wrong one used so very often, it has lodged in my brain, and unless I'm truly paying attention when I write, I'm just as likely to use the incorrect homonym.

Well, at least I haven't sunk to using "ur" yet...