On demand: Make your mark!

Do you know how many languages there are in this world? Well, I don’t know either but I am sure there are thousands of them. Still, there can only be one language that is truly universal and that’s English. Why is that? Well, I am sure very intelligent people from all parts of the world must have come to a consensus and they must have agreed that this was the most comprehensive, easy to learn, easy to use and ‘complete in every sense’ language. Yes, it’s a beautiful language. To use it correctly while speaking and writing is quite important I feel. While I touched on some of the glitches introduced in the language cause of the speaking part, I feel like talking about the writing part today.
What I intend to focus on is punctuation marks. The thoughts that may arise are “Are they really that important?” or “Isn’t conveying the idea my aim here?”. Well, yes, they are important and I’ll try and present my case here. Now let us say there is some British man who had little formal education (but obviously can use a computer… anyone can!!!!) and there is some well-educated friend of yours on the other hand. Both these people are equally mature in the thought process department. Both know english. The two of them write you an e-mail each. What’s the difference between the them? How do you think one can tell who is educated and who is not? Is there no difference? Does it not matter? Or maybe formal education is over-rated, what say?
You do see where I am going with this, don’t you? In today’s world, the smallest things are the ones that are magnified and cited as evidences of traits. Why is it that the bigger things are ignored? I don’t know. Maybe they look the same for everyone. Maybe people have learnt to cover them up in some way. Maybe, after knowing that people are disguising their bigger flaws, we don’t trust the ‘bigger things’ to judge people.
Now I’ll get back to the point at hand before I digress. Today, everyone can speak English. Everyone can write. Harbhajan Singh learnt how to speak well. The Pakistani ex-cricket players are commentating and if they can do that much, they can write too you know. But not everyone can punctuate correctly. It is THE thing that can set people apart. It can increase the value of what you write, enhance the reader’s interest, increase clarity and again… place you above others!
But then there is this other set of people who say, “I don’t care about all this. I just want to convey my idea.” Well, for them, all I have to say is check out the comments section of this post. I have de-punctuated a couple of lines and posted them there.
Don’t forget the small marks... For they make a big difference!

lets keep it simple

The curtains are down and Kimi Raikkonen is world champion. What an amazing race it was!!! After a long long time I really enjoyed a formula one race for its entire duration. Excited, I messaged this junior of mine: “ Champ --> Kimi”. Just moments later, I got a reply: “I know, that’s so kewl!!” … And everything stops. This word “kewl” (= "cool") was the distraction needed to spoil the post-race conference. See, I get bothered about the smallest of things. When I encounter something new, I have to think about what caused this new discovery to take place. And if it’s about fake words, then be it.
Now, the reasons people use such words in spoken or written language are varied so I will need a few examples to cover them. Like the word “kewl”…. It has been made up in an attempt to convey a western accent in a written medium. Another made-up word is “y’all” (short form of “all of you”). This one was made in an attempt to sound keeewl!!! Then there is this word I got in some other sms: “Sowwy” (in place of “sorry"). This was an attempt to sound cute. But something is definitely wrong here. What these words were intended to do was not accomplished here. I mean, “sowwy” is a pronunciation of “sorry” I would expect from 4 year old American girls. So, when I hear a 20 yr old man using it, I don’t think of him as cute, I think of him as gay. And “y’all”?…. Have we just started merging any 2 words now? The picture this word paints is of some English rapper or eminem wannabe who unfortunately dropped out of school (and no, that’s not what the aim was).
People also write “ma” in messages instead of “my” and I don’t know why. Both forms are two-letter words so there is no time saving in sms typing. And changing one letter of a two-letter word changes its composition by 50 PERCENT!!!!! The list of these kinds of words is increasing very quickly.
Now why would anyone want to do such a thing to the beautiful words of the English language??? All I have to say is that if anyone wants to try something different, try something like adding French or Latin words to your vocabulary. Ma advice to y’all is that to be kewl, keep it clean people :-)…. Peace!

My First Post

Yessss.... I have done it. Been thinking of it for months but have been putting it off. But now, I finally have my own blog. Feeling great.. Its like a new addition to my internet life!!!