It makes me weep just how bad our literacy levels are at the moment. Take for instance the email I received today from "The Royal Bank of Scotland." It's not the immoral attempt to get me to send my banking details to some scammer sitting in front of a computer screen that gets me. It's not even the fact that they called me sambucci. What really gets to me is the pitiful grammar and vocabulary on display.
And it's not just email scammers that have me shuddering; this morning I listened as a Rugby World Cup pundit struggled to think of something to say live on air.
Now I don't claim to be an expert on the language (one look at the spelling mistakes I've made in this blog over the years will show you that) but even I could have thought of an alternative for 'ideas' without the need of a thesaurus.
In the email scammers' case they may be excused slightly - as surprising as it may seem, that 'hyperlink' does not send you to a secure area of the Royal Bank of Scotlands headquarters in Gogarburn; it doesn't even take you anywhere near Edinburgh. It takes you to some domain called lopfroriif in China. Shocking. But at least the fact that english isn't their first language excuses some of their mistakes. It doesn't, however, excuse the distinct lack of imagination, the slap dash design (not even a logo!), the lack of attention shown to detail, an obvious absence of research, the constant repetition of 'request', an amateur...
And it's not just email scammers that have me shuddering; this morning I listened as a Rugby World Cup pundit struggled to think of something to say live on air.
What gets to me is their lack of ideas. They had no ideas. It was as if. All
over the pitch. No ideas. Any of them. Just a complete lack of. Ideas.
Now I don't claim to be an expert on the language (one look at the spelling mistakes I've made in this blog over the years will show you that) but even I could have thought of an alternative for 'ideas' without the need of a thesaurus.
In the email scammers' case they may be excused slightly - as surprising as it may seem, that 'hyperlink' does not send you to a secure area of the Royal Bank of Scotlands headquarters in Gogarburn; it doesn't even take you anywhere near Edinburgh. It takes you to some domain called lopfroriif in China. Shocking. But at least the fact that english isn't their first language excuses some of their mistakes. It doesn't, however, excuse the distinct lack of imagination, the slap dash design (not even a logo!), the lack of attention shown to detail, an obvious absence of research, the constant repetition of 'request', an amateur...
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