Does this comma make me look disfashionable?

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Well, does it make look disfashionable or not?/ GJo

Well, does it make me look disfashionable or not?/ GJo

Don’t make me feel disfunny.

My father and I often trade text messages back and forth. The following three things will cause this to happen: 1) important life stuff (because, duh); 2) when the Riders are winning, losing, embarrassing themselves, or otherwise involved with football related activities; or, 3) when either of us see a grammatical error or linguistic construction that baffles each of our imaginations.

The main perpetrators are sports commentators. No longer is an athlete unbalanced, they are now ‘disbalanced’. This elimination of a certain prefix would allow English, one of the more frustrating languages in the world, to rise up and become one of the main ways in which people communicate. Oh, wait. As a writer, when I am perusing Facebook instead of completing my continuously on-the-go manuscript, no longer am I not writing. Instead, I am ‘diswriting’, much more palatable and also suspiciously Jamaican sounding. I don’t have to reveal to my friends that I wasn’t studying before my midterm — after all, what a downer that is — no, I was ‘disstudying’.

I used to watch a sports network in England that advertised old events that they showed again as ‘relive’. Not ‘relive’ as in every time Aaron Rodgers goes to sleep for the next year or so all he will relive is the end of last weekend’s playoff game. My bad, that’s not Aaron Rodgers, that’s the life of our marketing manager, Arthur Ward. Instead, ‘relive’ as in this recording was once shown, and will be presented again, in a twisted version of real-time entertainment.

And this is to say nothing of the atrocities being committed when apostrophes (or the lack thereof) become involved. Now, this might seem like a tiny indiscretion, but become’s really annoying when they aren’t used incorrectly, doesnt it? Even worse when they arent used at all. What about commas? Did you know that commas save lives? As one t-shirt that is available on the Internet (because you can buy almost anything on the Internet, let’s be real) reads “Let’s Eat Grandma,” and then, underneath it, “Let’s Eat, Grandma,” with the warning about the safety of lives stitched in underneath. Say what you will about the humour — there are worse ones out there, believe me (or just ask Google) — it’s true, grammar is the system that defines how we organize language. And, without grammar and language, our communications would devolve into a pile of grunts and snorts.

Then again, maybe that would be easier. In fact, maybe that is why you can be a running back who gets hit, you can stumble a little bit, and you can come out misbalanced. Perhaps, in a few short years, not only will print media be gone, the language we use to create it will also follow. Life will become easier — except for copy editors because they will be on the unemployment line — as pointing and grunting will replace annoying conversations about the weather and whether the closest grocery store has artichokes. I mean sure, telecommunication companies will take a big hit and maybe even go out of business, but at least we’ll get back to our linguistic roots. After all, isn’t that what the hipsters want? I guess we will see how much they like starting from the bottom if it means it’s harder to order their soy bean coffee creations.

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