English - wrote good, spoke crook!

Those who decry correctness suggest that it’s what you say that’s important, not how you say it.

Why, then, have we progressed from the Neanderthal grunt of the caveman, to the oratory of Orson Welles; have we not gained clarity in the process? Then again, listen to some people speaking and ask yourself whether we’ve actually progressed much!

Let English change, but let those changes be with knowledge and understanding; knowledge of the right moment and reason, understanding gained from time spent in learning.

Let the English spoken by those in the vanguard of public awareness be correct, not corrupt.

Some television and radio reporters, early in their careers yet in the forefront of media, should understand that intuitively correct speech and fluency comes with experience, practice, and application of its tenets.

Maybe they need to study parsing, analysis, and grammar, learn how to structure a sentence, how to assign emphasis, and, for the benefit of the many listeners who may be neophyte English users, learn the right way to speak.

Or, in the case of one of my announcer friends of old, to shout! (Sorry, Phil).

Not only is speech a didactic medium, it is an emotive one; its quality bears on whether a speaker’s statements are accepted. A competently spoken address has greater impact than a stumbling, unsure, badly expressed assertion.

Therefore, it is important to know the correct way to do something with speech, before you proceed to “undo” it for dramatic effect, or out of ignorance.

Skill comes from knowledge and practice; anyone can blow a trumpet, but how many play it as well as Louis Armstrong?

English - it’s gotta be talked good! Rules rule!

OK?