Americans are increasingly illiterate. 

It’s a fact and something that is becoming more visible and painfully obvious every day.

Ask your average middleclass white American if they are literate and they will usually enthusiastically (with some degree of incredulousness) say “yes.” Even if you have to clarify for them what the word literate means.

Most have completed at least high school, grade 12, and some have gone on to attend college, acquire an undergraduate degree, and some lesser number of these folks have received graduate degrees. Yet, many flounder with grammar, spelling, and punctuation when writing their thoughts and communicating to others.

You can thank social media (SM) for much of this revelation.

I am continually amazed at the gibberish I read online from “educated” people who often write with authority, yet at the same time butcher their sentences — rife with misspellings; grammatical errors; missing or wrongly-used punctuation; missing verbs, pronouns, or nouns in some cases. They leave their reader to interpret correctly or incorrectly what they are saying at best. At worst, they fail to communicate at all. And, this can cause confusion, misunderstandings, or disdain toward them at the least.

What could be considered humorous fallout from their lack of literacy, is that many middleclass Americans consider themselves higher on the social, educational, and financial ladder than they are. Yet, when they write, or even speak in public, they drop this veil of superiority and it falls to the floor to expose a wee bit of ignorance in their fundamental use of the English language. Some will help them out and say it is just laziness on their part, perhaps being in a hurry, or being colloquial. Of course, excusing or overlooking this inadequacy only seems to promote more leeway for poor usage of the language.

Of course, that’s nonsense. It takes no longer to write and speak correctly than it does incorrectly. To be sure, speaking or writing correctly means doing so coherently and being understood. You can quarrel with the merits of communicating “correctly” (as in political correctness, which is also nonsense in my opinion), but when you do a poor job it does two things for sure: It reflects upon you personally, and it makes your effort to share thoughts, facts, and information ineffective and less credible. Example: If you say, “I are an English teacher,” do you really think someone would believe you, or if they did, believe you are a competent, effective teacher? Really?

With the proliferation of social media, a lot of people are posting interesting and questionable perspectives, opinions, news, facts, conspiracy theories, and outright racist rants on Facebook , Instagram , Nextdoor , LinkedIn , Alignable and other SM platforms. It is “literally” amazing the correlation between extreme views and the butchering of the language as folks write some of the most outlandish posts. Now, I’ve made my share of typos when, well, “typing.” That is sometimes understandable. But to completely misspell, misuse, or exclude words can be very telling.

What accounts for this lapse of language arts from high school graduation until adulthood? Could it be as simple as lack of exercise; falling into an adulthood where reading, writing and speaking is no longer important because it is no longer graded? Or, is it a total lack of caring, where “fitting in” with friends, family and contemporaries means skipping the formalities of proper grammar, punctuation and spelling? Maybe it is that we didn’t learn any of these things very well in the first place, which becomes an indictment of our school systems and our own self-discipline when it comes to learning.

What is the remedy?
Well, for one, writers of anything – a post, a letter, a term paper, a note, a text on your phone — anything including speech, should slow down, think about they want to say before writing or typing, and then proceed. They can write and type, then review what they’ve just attempted to communicate — making any corrections and revision before finalizing it. They can also ask themselves that eternal question, “Is what I am saying honest, kind, civil, and necessary?” This last checklist item is more about being a good human than a grammarian.

Remember, too, there is a big difference between being heard, being understood, and being believed. How you say it or write it is often as important as what you are saying. It can hide the ignorance most of us possess to some degree. Yes, we can be short on knowledge about a lot of things, but we don’t have to flaunt it.

Don’t ever say or write, “I no what you mean. I know what there sayin’.” Because when you do, you’ve lost my respect, your credibility, and your ability to share a thought, or two.

More background:

Wikipedia tells us: “Dictionaries traditionally define literacy as the ability to read and write. In the modern world. this is one way of interpreting literacy. One more broad interpretation sees literacy as knowledge and competence in a specific area. The concept of literacy has evolved in meaning. The modern term's meaning has been expandedto include the ability to use language, numbers, images, computers, and other basic means to understand, communicate, gain useful knowledge, solve mathematical problems and use the dominant symbol systems of a culture.