For the past month, many students have experienced a rude awakening. While using phrases such as “C U L8R” might work for Facebook, Twitter, or other social media networks, they’re finding teachers and professors aren’t quite so accepting.Grammar counts. Not just for authors and publishers, but for everyone. Problem is, the parents of those students are just as guilty. Think about it:

• When was the last time you properly used a semicolon in a sentence?
• Do you know what an independent clause is?
• What is a gerund?
• Do you misplace your modifiers?
• Do you know the difference between there, their, and they’re or when to use parents, parent’s and parents’?

Ouch! Children learn what we model. Unfortunately, we are frequently modeling poor PUGS, that is, punctuation, usage, grammar, and spelling. Even more unfortunately, there is truth to the adage that “what parents do in moderation, children do in excess.” This applies to sin, bad habits, and to poor writing habits.

Why should we care? After all, if you’re not a professional writer or school teacher, isn’t that the job of the education system to handle? We should care, because proper use of written language affects our ability to communicate effectively, whether we’re writing a complaint letter to the local telephone company or a graduate school essay.

Here’s an example you may have seen. I’ve lost count of the number of rants on Facebook or other social media complaining about a variety of issues, including Common Core. Common Core is a set of educational requirements that seeks to establish consistent educational standards across state lines. Many parents and educators have serious reservations about the curriculum. But as they criticize these educational standards, their credibility is called into question when they write something like this:

“There trying to force Common Core on us. We don’t need no outside groups’ telling us what standards to use in our childrens educaton.”

How many errors did you spot in that post? Did you find all five?

Or consider a letter to the editor appearing on the editorial page of a newspaper in defense of the Bible:

“The Bible is Gods instruction book for people. When we disobey God, His rath will fall on us. We must here His word and repent before its to late.”

Apart from the content, do you think the punctuation and grammar earned the respect of those who may have had a different point of view? (By the way, did you spot all five errors?)

It may not be easy or pleasant, but we need to pay more attention to what we write and how we write it. Future generations will thank us.