Y cannot. persons' Use [good english,] more oftener?

People simply don't have enough respect for language. I'm not talking about its manipulation or the morphing of language. Language is alive and it should be malleable. I'm talking about the startling lack of knowledge regarding the simple rules that make language what it is: Vocabulary and Grammar. You could make an argument for adding syntax in that list as well, but I think those are the big two. Language is the foundation of society in many ways and it seems like many people don't care about language at all.

In talking to a friend today, I heard about a teacher who stated publicly that he used semi-colons to hunt out plagiarism. His first red flag for the fact that someone may have plagiarized their paper was the CORRECT usage of a semi-colon. The worst part about this is that I actually believe it. Not to mention, that I don't even blame the teacher. It seems like this is more of a reactionary measure than an expectation on his part. He's probably seen such horrendous grammatical blunders that it is actually hard to read papers. It is not even hard to believe that he might be shocked when a paper comes across his desk that is written well.

I don't even care if you know what a gerund is or if you don't have an opinion on the Harvard comma. Those kinds of concerns are better reserved for people who actually have a vested interest in the written language. I do care that people know the differences between "there" "their" and "they're", the usage of a semi-colon, a basic comprehension of the purpose of the interplay between connotation and vocabulary, and a basic understanding of the subject-predicate composition of a simple sentence. It just seems to me that communication between human beings relies on these kinds of principles too heavily to not care about them at all.

I find it sad that so many people have such a vapid comprehension of simple language concepts that it results in a teacher being forced into suspicion of cheating as a result of someone using a simple grammatical device correctly.