Sloppy language is a reflection of sloppy thought, and the caliber of language today confirms that Idiocracy already has arrived. It's becoming impossible to read the news, watch advertisements, or share correspondence without having to cross a minefield of misspellings, run-on sentences, needless apostrophes, subject-verb disagreements, pronoun-antecedent mismatches, and just utter incoherence. Recently, though, this illiteracy reached new depths.
I was reading a news story about a talented horse competing in this year's Kentucky Derby, and the story named the horse as "American Pharoah." My first reaction was to consider the publication a rag in need of a new copy editor. After all, the proper spelling for the rulers of ancient Egypt is "Pharaoh," a word made all the more famous by its association with the story of Exodus. Upon checking other publications, though, I learned that the misspelling truly is the horse's name because all of the adults who contributed to coming up with the name were too ignorant to know it was wrong.
This display of illiteracy matches Honey, I Shrunk The Kids for its sheer prominence and brazenness. I wish someone would make a "time masheen" and take me back about 100 to 150 years.
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