And You Can Be My Cowgirl.

I love that old 80s song, “I wanna be a cowboy” but it does remind me how much I loathe the term ‘wanna’ which seems to be creeping into our language and is promoted by many a famous blog. ‘Wanna’ is up there with ‘kinda’ and ‘gonna’ as commonplace contractions in spoken English, but when these ‘common’ contractions occur in considered writing, my rant radar goes off,  along with the misuse of ‘like’, ‘awesome’ and ‘guys’, the latter lazily thrown about as if a non-gendered form of address.

Resist the destruction of written English! Or just sing,

Yippy yippy yi, yippy yippy yi yo yo

Oh, yippy yippy yo yo!

Brand New calf, Dougie the Dexter and his Mother Delilah.
Brand New calf, Dougie the Dexter and his mother, Delilah.

Have you also noticed this ‘wanna’,’kinda’ language appearing too often for your liking?

13 thoughts on “And You Can Be My Cowgirl.”

  2. I’ve been guilty of guys and kinda I have to say BUT am I the only one who gets annoyed with using ‘of’ instead of ‘have’? As in ‘I could of gone to English lessons but I skived off down the park instead’ or ‘I should of paid more attention in English lessons’. I see it now of the most surprising of blogs. That’s my little rant of the day out of the way……

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    1. Thanks Nancy. That mistaken ‘ of ‘ thing is especially annoying. When poor English is expressed in blogs, not typos, just poor English, I feel the red correction biro coming out.

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  4. I was once a merciless spelling, grammar, pronunciation Nazi but thankfully in that, as in many other things, I have mellowed. Not everyone, of course, is happy with those slipped standards but I’m far more comfortable with casual unless it counts, such as a job application, interview, etc.

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    1. My tendencies towards Fascism, when it comes to language, have deepened over the years as the degradation and misuse of English becomes more widespread. Typos and grammatical errors don’t worry me. As for all those floating apostrophes, who cares. It is when I read words that have been selected for effect long blog pieces that I see red ( a red pen).
      “I kinda think we are gonna lose our language and wanna let everyone know that it’s sorta annoying.”

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  5. I am not a fan of internet viral spelling issues such as definately and looser (for loser) otherwise I chill about most other youthy things. Oh, did I mention the fact the yelling/singing is a really annoying fad that has hung on since Whitney?

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    1. I hadn’t thought about the singing/yelling thing, but I agree. With the ‘youthy’ speak, I think all contractions are fine in everyday conversation. It has always been done. Do you remember being told as a child ‘not to drop your ‘g ‘s? They told us this, not only to protect the language but so we wouldn’t sound like peasants. But when it comes to writing , it really jumps out.
      “I’m gonna give you an example. I just wanna tell you that bloggers out there are kinda destroying the written language by sorta writing like this”
      When I read it ( as distinct from hearing it) it makes me want to yell like Whitney.

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