RIP English: Welcome to its "ignominiously diminished form"

(Image from The Washington Post)

I read an interesting column about the recent demise of the English language by Gene Weingarten, columnist for the Washington Post titled Goodbye, cruel words: English. It's dead to me.

Weingarten argues the ultimate demise of the English language at 1,617 years old, "survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself", came from the Washington Post itself. He writes:

The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post. A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the "youngest" daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their "younger" daughter. In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the "Obama's." This, too, was published, constituting an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy. Moments later, already severely weakened, English died of shame.

He goes on to list examples of misspelled words and misused phrases found in major newspapers, including "pronounciation", "Alot", "spading and neutering" and "doggy dog world".

While the column is humourous, Weingarten brings up an interesting point.

Beset by the need to cut costs, and influenced by decreased public attention to grammar, punctuation and syntax in an era of unedited blogs and abbreviated instant communication, newspaper publishers have been cutting back on the use of copy editing, sometimes eliminating it entirely.

As our editing print and online media class is finding with our "spot the screwup" assignments, newspaper publications aren't perfect. And as everyone knows, when time is short, reading becomes skimming.

As staff numbers dwindle at newspapers worldwide, are we at risk of losing the English language? If newspapers don't use proper English, who will?