Writing Wrongs?

I was interested in the Today Programme’s discussion this morning on whether all opinions of bloggers are equal. They set up a debate between an academic literary critic and a blogger to debate this. As a piece of radio, it didn’t quite work as the blogger was actually a professional librarian who had qualifications and experience to rival the academics. However the question is an interesting one, how do we access the value of academic versus amateur opinion?

Well, one way has to be the quality of the written word. I understand and accept that language is an evolutionary process and that most of us no longer write with quill pens, nor think in Chaucer’s terminology. Whilst some may mourn that as a loss of quality, I see it as an outcome of mass literacy, which has to be a social good. Moreover, new words and phrases come into parlance all the time, as this lovely book on the impact of the environmental lexicon on English indicates:
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/wordfrom/greening/?view=uk


So, it is inevitable that language changes. On balance, this is probably a good thing. What is completely unacceptable however, is an acceptance of a loss of standards in the written word. Formal written documents, be they essays, commercial documents or contracts, should be grammatically accurate, and if not interesting to read, at least intelligible. We have a diverse and beautiful language which should be a joy to read and write, not a chore.

This matters, not because I’m a language snob (I was state school educated all the way!), but because it’s how we communicate with each other. How can I expect clients to trust my advice, if they can’t understand my recommendations because they are so poorly written? Language is currency – let’s not cheapen it.