Becoming Acting Chairman of The Queen's English Society by default is an interesting position in which to find oneself. There is a feeling of impermanence; one is almost free to do whatever one wishes to further QES knowing that the society can, in a few months, vote someone else in to be Chairman. So. We have many erudite members who write letters to bring poor English to the attention of authors, newspapers, advertisers and the like. We have people working incredibly hard to produce, what I consider, a wonderful facility, that is free to all with access to a computer......The Academy. It is this that I feel we should be using to advance our visibility to the world.
We, and by we I mean ALL of us, should be trying to publicise QES, now we have something truly visible. We should be telling all our friends about QES any way we can. There are so many ways to communicate now we should be exploiting as many of them as possible. Those who use Twitter could tweet about QES and invite people to view the web site. Those who use social websites could be talking about points of grammar that they have sorted by using the Academy and those who use e-mail could put a signature that automatically goes at the end of each mail. I use ....'Bet you can't guess what's at QES' and the web address appears underneath.
One could also contact one's local radio or TV station and offer to do an interview to tell them about QES and the wonderful new web site. The more people who hear of us, the better, and the more members we are likely to get. I am always surprised by the number of people who listen to local radio and often participate too. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity to tell those people of the free web site available to them.
The next thing will be to get in touch with the education ministers, both incumbent and shadow, to try to encourage a change in the education policy. Not only does government need to stop interfering in the school curricula, we need to return to old methods of teaching reading so that all children can master the skill by the age of 11 at the latest. We have to recognise that schools need to help not only the disadvantaged but also the gifted. The latter can cope with all the niceties of English punctuation and grammar, while the former perhaps only need basic English, enough to leave a message for the milkman, or write a clear, unambiguous note to a teacher. Above all, common sense needs to prevail in our teaching of English, so no text speak in schools, no writing like ee cummings, but a return to the use, and not abuse, of punctuation.
What with Quest and the web site I feel we have an huge resource available for people, and the more people who know of us, the better. We should be telling everybody we know about QES, getting it into conversation with friends and acquaintances alike. If each member encouraged just one of their friends to join, that would mean a huge increase in numbers.
It is, indeed, an huge resource, and I, merely an humble plodder in the field of English usage, am overjoyed to see the tongue of Shakespeare, and of Dan Brown, protected by such an highly repectable website. Love your stuff.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? It refers to those who are too ignorant to know that they are ignorant! These researchers found that people who actually had very bad English skills imagined themselves to have superior skills. I think there's a lot of that in the world today. Keep up the good work.
The author of the previous comment can't even spell respectible. I blame the government.
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