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Article:
English Language Sputtering Online Like an Old Ford! by: Jorge M Vega Sad, but true. Just about everywhere you look online, the English language is suffering a fate worse than death. The problem, in reality, is so widespread that it has begun to affect all aspects of the language. 'But, what on Earth does this have to do with Internet marketing?' you may be asking. Well, my fellow netpreneur...Everything! It has everything to do with Internet marketing if you wish to portray yourself, and be perceived as, a Marketing Professional on the internet. Just remember, professionally speaking, Image is Everything. On the other hand, if you're not particularly interested in putting your 'best foot forward' when marketing your services or products, and I really hope this is not the case, then none of this applies to you. Obviously, we don't have time here to do an in-depth study of the many instances of, what I would term, 'casual disdain' I've witnessed online. So, in order to illustrate my point, I'll concentrate on a small, but vital component of the English language: the innocent, harmless apostrophe. Allow me to try to paint a picture for you. A long, long, time ago, around the time of the De Soto, the Corvair, bellbottoms, the VW 'bug' (ring a bell?), and before beatniks became known as hippies, you could look at advertisement copy and expect, to some degree, that it had been reviewed and, presumably, corrected. In other words, it was safe for women, children, and other life forms to view it, and read its content without suffering any permanent, debilitating psychological damage, such as a hard to diagnose speech impediment, or maybe an involuntary nervous twitch across one cheek. What I see most of us doing now, at the dawn of the 21st Century, is that we read ad copy, and then, because it's in bold letters on carefully selected background, surrounded by pretty pictures, we accept its message as Gospel truth. We get so bowled over by the 'look' of it, that we forget to examine it critically enough. Talk about your viral strategy, indeed... Today, in the age of the cell phone, the Lexus, Viagra, the twenty five cent phone call, and a PC 'in every barn,' wherever I look, I see the poor apostrophe maligned and misused. It gets no respect, either offline on signs, billboards, and late-night Infomercials, or (shudder) online in cyber country, on that very personal and intimate expression of its owner's taste and personality: an individual's web site. Since I spend so much time online, much more, I think, than I spend on the real pavement of our world, I notice the glaring mistreatment heaped upon our poor little fellow- the apostrophe-by careless webmasters, even more. The main thing I notice is that the apostrophe's originally intended use is slowly eroding; people are just making up their own versions of what its purpose really is. This is a prime example of what I mean by 'casual disdain.' It's been reported in 'The Really Up Yonder Gazette
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