Pedantry

I'm noted for my high regard for grammar and spelling, and my pedantry with regard to the proper use of such. Thus, the Internet is rather a bad place for me. Everywhere I look, my precious grammar rules are being flouted in the most heinous way. Yet I have no intention of railing against this; there is quite simply no point. Besides, I'm someone who has typed pretty much everything, including formal examinations, for several years now; I'm faster at typing than most people, and thus have less need to revert to shorthand – often the flouting of these rules is a simple matter of expediency. More troubling to me, however, is the fact that the Internet seems to be developing its own language – one which takes perfectly respectable English vocabulary and puts it through the meat grinder. I'm not even talking about abbreviations (brb, lol, btw and the like), but simply the bizarre hybrid of English in which single-word descriptions of just about everything are sufficient, and those descriptions are so banal as to be almost meaningless – "Fail!" being, I believe, the absolute nadir. As such, I shall stand here ordering the tide not to come in, and lay down a few tips and recommendations for the sake of my sanity.

- Less of the superlatives, please. Obviously, this is an old one, as exemplified by the immortal Comic Book Guy and his "worst _____ EVER!" catchphrase, but really, I'm going to have to start demanding empirical proof every time someone says something like this. Some kind of detailed experiment using control groups and such.

- On a similar note, there are the markedly emphatic adjectives. "Awesome" has passed into the vernacular to such an extent that I can just about accept it, while such words as "brilliant" still retain their original meanings. I recently witnessed, however, someone describing a Doctor Who character as "eternally awesome". This is such a ridiculously overblown description that I can't even begin to fathom it. This is the kind of language that might be used to describe God in the Old Testament. Ironically, it was applied to the most mundane character in the series. Constant use of the strongest adjectives in a language tends only to devalue those adjectives, in much the same way that swearing becomes more acceptable the more it's used.

- "Fail" is a verb, not a noun; treat it as such (even in reference to a test; "I got a fail" is grammatically suspect at best). "Failure" is a perfectly appropriate noun, if you must have one for that hilarious video of a cat falling off a table. Do please try to qualify it a little though, please. It is not, however, an adjective; "failing" is perhaps the closest equivalent. The same goes for "win"; describing something as "win" is a crime against the English language.

- The word "epic" (in its adjective form) is quickly going the way of "random"; becoming so hideously overused in so many different contexts (to which its application is questionable at best) as to risk losing all meaning. I put it in a separate category to the aforementioned emphatic adjectives because it is perhaps the worst offender. The final of Britain's Got Talent is not "epic"; it would be epic if it were genuinely to be a talent show featuring every single inhabitant of the United Kingdom singing with a dog, or doing some kind of bizarre dance. Epics need to be genuinely gobsmacking in scale. The Rapture, for instance, would be epic. A lengthy bus journey, unless it's between dimensions or planes of reality, is not.

- More than one exclamation mark is usually a tautology at best, incoherent at worst. More than three is just abandoning all pretence at sanity.

- Finally, ladies and gentleman, please look to your Caps Lock keys. Shift is a rather more nuanced ally.

Perhaps the worst thing is that this particular vernacular is beginning to worm its way into spoken language; I occasionally hear people describing things as "win" or "fail" or other ghastly Internet-based terms. I would describe them as "neologisms", but in fact they are more like debasements of existing words.

As such, I shall continue to sit here, in my own grammatically correct corner of the Internet, and figuratively stroke the English language like a beloved cat. Do let me know if you can think of any other hideous debasements. If you'd care to disagree, do feel free; bear in mind that I was born at least a century too late, and have little regard for the idea of language being in flux. Grammar is my lover, and our relationship is a close one.