Snobbery-bloggery

Okay, I admit it. I'm a grammar snob. I walk around in my own little self-important grammar bubble, believing that proper grammar is necessary and extremely valuable, and that if you do not use proper grammar, there's something wrong with you. I should, however, caveat that by saying that I do not look down on uneducated people - but I do think that if you know better, or SHOULD know better (because of the type of job you do), then you deserve to be corrected. You practically CRY OUT to be corrected. Now, I won't spend much time here quibbling over the finer points of semi-colon usage, but if you are a communications director or a marketing specialist and you can't differentiate between "less" and "fewer," you are fair game!

So........without further ado.................

Welcome to the Grammar Snob!

Mostly for fun, partly for education, and largely to share the silly writing issues I come across nearly every day, Grammar Snob is dedicated to pointing out written mistakes and poking fun at them.

This really isn't about typos - everybody makes those little mistakes - but more about systemic sentence problems, oft-seen word mistakes, and downright unprofessional written communication. (That doesn't mean I won't include the occasional typo if it's humorous.)

I don't care so much if your Facebook comment is littered with misuses of "your" and "there" (though it does grate on me); I am mostly concerned here with cases where someone who really should know better has made themselves or their organization look bad through careless or uneducated use of English in a more formal setting than some social media rant.

First up: the email received from Adobe customer service today, which is clearly written by a non-native English speaker. While I have nothing against non-native English speakers (my own mother being one of them), I do feel that a company as illustrious as Adobe should be able to manage to communicate to clients in a way that makes them at least APPEAR professional. The example below, presented verbatim, does not qualify:

Thank you for contacting Adobe.

We apologize for the delay in response and appreciate your patience in this regards. Please be informed, your request for complimentary upgrade for Live Cycle Designer ES3 has been denied from our next level team as you havepurchased term licesne for Acrobat XI and this customers do not qualify for the free uograde to Adobe Designer 10.0 . We are only providing free upgrade to those customers who have purchased upgrade license of Acrobat Pro XI . Hence, we regret to inform you that we are　unable to process your request.

However, you contact our Sales department in order to purchase Live Cycle Designer seperately.

Please contact our Sales department at 1800-585-0774.

Thank you,

Adobe Customer Care

Oh, no, thank YOU, Adobe Customer Care! *eyeroll* They must have had that translated by Microsoft Word or something. I count 15 problems. That doesn't instill a whole lot of confidence. Ah, well.

If I have one piece of enduring advice for anyone who writes anything, it is this: please READ IT THROUGH before hitting SEND, POST, or SUBMIT. (Of course, doing so will have the effect of seriously reducing the material available for this blog.)

Okay, maybe NOT so silently...