Friday, October 9, 2015

"Woe is I" -- Grammar matters in business, don't it?



Growing up, you learned that two plus two is four, right? And by "right," I don't mean morally right. I mean mathematically correct. For the same reason, two plus two is five is "wrong."
Maybe you also learned -- using the terminology of traditional English grammar -- that any form of the verb "to be" cannot have a direct object. Therefore "woe is me" is grammatically wrong because "me" is an object form of the first person pronoun. "Woe is I" is correct. 
But there's a difference between what's right and wrong in math and in grammar. How we express ourselves in writing and speech has all sorts of cultural baggage. A person who continually makes grammatical errors may seem not only uneducated but actually offensive.
It's surprising, therefore, how many people today make obvious errors of grammar and usage, even at upper executive levels As a recruiter, here's something I've heard more than once: "Whatever you do, don't send me anybody who doesn't know the difference between 'there' and 'there, or between 'your' and 'you're.' That drives me crazy!"
I've also heard (again, more than once) that online communication has changed the rules of  writing. That Twitter's 140 character limit, for example, has put a premium on brevity. What matters now is making your point in the fewest possible words rather than adherence to annoying laws. In fact, adhering too closely to those laws can make you seem not only old fashioned, but just plain old. 
I don't know the correct answer to this. Language has always been evolving. Is it best to go with the flow, or fight to the last split infinitive. I used to tell people that they were free to speak or write any way they liked, but if they wanted to get hired they'd better mind their p's and q's.
Is that still true today? What do you think?
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