Okay, the title of my entry may be a bit dramatic, but I’m freaking out here! Grammar and spelling in this country are going to hell in a hand basket, and I blame it on the internet and text messaging. Does anyone remember when our pet peeves were the correct usage of there, their and they’re? How about the difference between your and you’re or maybe its and it’s? Ah, the good old days. How quaint they were.

Today, we are overrun with misspellings and ridiculous abbreviations thanks to our friend the internet. Shoot, we can even use numbers to spell if we want. We can use 2L8, H8, L8R or l33t. Forget about kids being taught things in school like - i before e, except after c. Pretty soon they’ll be told things like - BRB and ROTFL are not actually words.

On top of that, it’s creeping into common usage. How in the world are our kids supposed to learn how to spell correctly when everything out there is rite, lite or nite? I can see why this is happening. Heaven forbid someone would have to learn something other than a strictly phonetic based language. Oh, by the way, think about the word phonetic for a moment. That’s a pretty good joke if you think about it.

The thing that really gets my goat is not that people are so lazy with the language, but that it will become standard eventually. Want proof? One of my all time pet peeves is the word “collectible”. Notice it has an “i” in it. That is the CORRECT way to spell the word. Unfortunately, at some point, so many people thought it was spelled with an “a” that the fine people at Merriam-Webster threw up their hands and said, “I guess it’s okay. We’ll call “collectable” a variation of “collectible”. Are you kidding me? Why? Because people don’t know how to spell it correctly? That just irks me.

Oh well, I am but one angry man fighting the system. Feel free to ignore me at any time. L8R Dudez!