My head hurts

Over at US News they have a poll about video games, a subject near to my heart and wallet, and whether or not kids should be able to purchase violent ones. I wanted to vote and say that children should not be able to purchase violent games, no more than they should be able to see violent movies or TV shows. Personally I feel that parents and retailers should be keeping violent games out of the hands of children but that it should be handled like movies and not regulated like a controlled substance.

Obviously a simple yes/no poll doesn’t offer much of a chance to articulate this view; by voting that kids shouldn’t be able to buy them I’m putting myself in the same camp as someone who doesn't think that anyone should buy violent games. Still, I was curious and wanted to see how the poll would work itself out. Then I saw the question:

“Should Kids Not Be Sold Violent Video Games?”

Wait, what? This may be a legitimate english  sentence but it is goddamn confusing. It’s even more confusing because it’s a poll question that asks you to affirm a negative. Would it have been hard to rephrase the question as “should violent video games not be sold to kids” or even better (although it changes the answers) “should violent video games be sold to kids”? No, it wouldn’t. Part of me wants to rail against US News for creating a question that shapes the results towards a desired outcome but I don’t think they have any desire to do so with this poll. It’s just awkward and poor writing.

Dear Internet…

Dear Internet,

You have a full keyboard in front of you. You, on average, have a total of four fingers and two thumbs to use said keyboard. It stands to reason that you would be more than capable of fully spelling out words such as “you” and “second” (as in removed at the last second").

What exactly makes you think it’s acceptable to use short hand like “ur” for “your” in public discourse? Not only does it make you seem dumb, it weakens your argument. Ur can be a German prefix meaning proto or primitive or it can mean a city in ancient Sumer, but it does not mean you’re or your. Just because you text that way to your friends doesn’t mean you should expose the rest of us to your typographical atrocities.

Language may be constantly evolving, but that is no reason to backslide into a series of ambiguous hieroglyphs just because you can’t be bothered to type a couple extra characters. Your keyboard has all those letters (and characters) for a reason. You’re a big boy now, you can handle it.

PSA: Breath vs Breathe

I’m no Scripps finalist myself but there are some misspellings/typos that absolutely drive me nuts. Breath/breathe is one of those.

“…can’t remember how to breath…”

You draw breath and breathe in air. That little e on the end makes all the difference.

It’s one of those typos that often happen when the writer is trying to make a scathing remark and insult the mental capacity of the target and instead makes the writer look like an idiot. The next time you are writing a screed on a forum or in the comments section of a blog do yourself a favor an make sure you remember how to spell breathe.

Next time, u and you; one of these is a letter and the other is a pronoun.