Is bad grammar in style?

Your/you're   it's/its  they're/their     These are three sets of words commonly misused. To any communicator, these mistakes stick out like sore thumbs, and make us twinge. Yes, mistakes happen, everyone does it, but do you correct someone if you spot these mistakes?

Personally, I do. I have been known to comment on grammatical errors on friend's statuses' on facebook; I do it because I love them and do not want them embarrassing themselves by making the same mistake again.

But then I ran across this article, in which the company mentioned takes spelling errors to a new level. It actually glorifies one of the mistakes mentioned above: you're and your. The clothing company has printed a shirt using your, when it should have been you're. On purpose! Sure their target market is teenagers, who are probably the ones committing this grammatical error the most often, but isn't that why we should be correcting them instead of glorifying illiteracy? I think this is a horrible idea that is an insult to the written word.

ANOTHER THING I HATE IS WHEN PEOPLE CAPITALIZE EVERYTHING! It is a trend I see occurring a lot on twitter, facebook and on forums I frequent. The point of capitalizing is to emphasize something. This has the opposite effect when you capitalize the whole sentence, or worse, the whole paragraph. I also find it to be rude. Capitalizing everything is the equivalent of yelling. A particular person on a particular forum I visit does it often. She tries to pass her wisdom to others on the forum and has to compete with hundreds of other posts so she does this to grab attention. It works in the reverse for me, I am not interested in what she has to say because I find it to be rude, it hurts the eyes, and the point she is trying to emphasize only blends in with her long capitalized post, making her posts hard to read.

I remember a case last year in Australia when a employee was fired for capitalizing everything on an email to a client. She wasn't trying to be rude but, it came across as rude to the client, and in the end, this mistake cost her her job.

So let's just all follow the rules and get along.

Are we too busy to say "bye"?

In my day job, I spend a lot of time on the phone. Most are inquiries from people who call me for information that could potentially lead them to getting a substantial amount of funding for training, and potentially a job.

Most people who call looking for this information from me are unemployed. Therefore, have lots of time on their hands. So why do so many people phone, and at the end of conversation end it with the click of the phone instead of saying "bye"? Is it really asking for too much to close your conversation, whether in phone or in person with a simple 3 letter word? Would uttering a signal syllable take that much time out of your busy day? I guess common courtesy is not that common.

Another setting I've seen this happen is when guys talk to their buddies. They are quick and brief in their conversation, and usually end it with a "K" and hangup. No bye, no talk to you later. Just "K, click". Guys of course, usually never get offended by this as much as women usually do.

Call me crazy but I think it's just plain rude to hang up without closure in the conversation. Are we really that busy?

This reminds me of this Sex and the City episode, where Carrie is in a very bad mood one morning after having been broken up through a post-it note that morning. Someone shoulder checks her on the busy streets of New York City, with no apology. Her reaction? She turns around and yells at them: YOU'RE SOOOO BUSY! Exactly my thoughts.

Does social media cause big egos?

The popularity and growth of social media in the past few years has been immense. Businesses from the local independently owned clothing shop to the big corporations have found taking part in two way communication with consumers, when done correctly, can have its benefits. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, being among the most popular. But what does it does for the regular human being that has nothing but themselves as a person, to promote?

For example, if you aren't trying to promote a business or product, what do you tweet about? You can tweet about what you're doing, where you're eating, and what kind of mood you're in. But how much personal info about a person can we take before they get boring, annoying, or both? One way to keep it interesting is to keep letting people know (your facebook friends or twitter followers) just how how fascinating you are. I'm guilty of falling into this trap. I follow a person because I like to know what he's doing. He knows what's up and coming and he always tries to be the first at the scene of a popular event, the first to try the latest gadget, or the first to comment on what the media finds newsworthy. No matter, what it is, he always has to put in his two cents. Overall, fascinating guy to follow.

The problem is he's quite cocky. If there's a hockey game on tv, he will remind us he watched that team take the gold medal home live last year. If he fell on the dance floor on his birthday cuz he had a few too many, he will take a pic of the dance floor and tweet about it. And people love it. I find him to be egotistical. Always trying to be the first one on the latest trend, and making sure to let everyone else know, that "you heard it here first". In marketing, we call these kinds of people early adopters. He would probably call himself, the pre-early adopter, just as he's referred to himself as an "internet evangelist" before. And why? Because people eat up what he's dishing out. 

I recently found a very young local kid who tweeted he could "single handidly make things trendy in Winnipeg". Right. Maybe in his circle of bbm friends, sure. Kids are always looking for someone to imitate. I've also seen both these individuals go out to clubs on the weekend and tweet about their every move: "on the dance floor", "at the bar", "doing a shot", fell and and I can't get up because I had to tweet first. (Okay the last one I made up, but it could just as well be true.) Never mind the fact burying your nose in a smartphone of the day is rude and disrespectful to the friends you're out with, but do they really need to justify how "cool" they are by letting everyone else know their every move. Sometimes you need to live your life, instead of tweeting every moment of it. #JustSaying

But what did these two individuals do before they could spread their self-proclaimed depths of knowledge to the rest of us? Does being able to hide behind your blackberry or  mac give you the confidence to refer to yourself in such omnipotent terms?

In a related note, the LinkedIn blog released the 10 most overused buzzwords on LinkedIn profiles in December of 2010. "Evangelist" didn't make the cut,  but entrepreneurial and dynamic were on the list. I immediately printed the list out and will refrain from using any of those words. This transfers to twitter and facebook, where I see countless individuals describe themselves as "mavens" or "guru's" every single day. I want to be unique, not join the trend of self-proclaiming your own almighty-ness. I'm going to let my work speak for itself. 

New year...not so new beginnings?

The new year usually brings with it all sorts of resolutions for people. Lose weight, stop smoking, and so on. But how many of us keep these resolutions?

Last year, I didn't have make a new year's resolution for 2010. I just wanted to move forward and make some positive changes that would mean getting rid of certain people who were bringing negative energy into my life. Well, the complete opposite happened. The person who was making me so happy at the time resulted in bringing me the most grief. And the person I originally wanted to cut out? In a whirlwind of events, he not only ended up making his way back into my life full time, he's also one of the many sources of happiness in my life right now.

For 2011, I have made a few resolutions. A lot, actually. But most of them are regular everyday things that should be easy to achieve as long as I keep a positive attitude and remember to live in the moment. Because really, life is gonna to throw at us what it wants - the difference we can make is in how we handle these situations.

After surviving the first week of 2011, I'm doing well in the exercise and eating healthy department of my resolutions. The resolution I'm having the most difficulty with: not to swear a single time during my morning drive to work.