I’m getting really annoyed with the idiots who constantly write ‘2morrow’ instead of ‘tomorrow’- or any of the various bad grammar forms that plague the internet in blog posts, message boards, and other digital media- like it’s perfectly normal and acceptable English.

It’s not; and you’re a moron for thinking it is.

I can sometimes overlook it when it’s in a quick text message. Sometimes. If you’re walking about town- or, God forbid, driving a car- you want to keep it brief and to the point. If the sender or receiver is on an older cell phone, where text messages are limited to 160 characters or less per message (which is exactly why Twitter has a character limit of 140), I understand the habit-forming decision to chop up words into abbreviations and acronyms. Keep it short and understandable to the receiver and keep your eyes on the path ahead of you so that you don’t end up walking into a fountain thus becoming the latest viral video sensation for your idiocy. It’s become the 21st Century equivalent of not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

So, I get it. Sometimes.

Thankfully, the current generation of smartphones such as the Windows Phone, the iPhone, and Android devices have finally fixed this shortcoming with the ability to put your complete thought into a single word bubble. What would amount to three text messages on an older phone now would be received by and display as a single message to the reader.

These twits even do it, though, when using good, old fashioned pen and paper- which in itself is becoming a lost art form, but I digress… The truly unforgivable offense happens when these same individuals are sitting in front of a computer- with a full keyboard, unlimited writing space, and time on their side- and choose to maintain this poor level of grammar and spelling. It’s completely inexcusable. You have all of the proofreading tools you need right there at your fingertips such as spell check  and grammar check- use them you half-wit. How are you not blinded by the intense red in the form of dotted lines underneath almost every word in your status update or thread reply?

The conclusion I’ve come up with is that the offender is too lazy to put in the one extra letter it takes to spell it correctly. I mean, really, how much time and/or message space are they actually saving themselves anyway?? Or, perhaps, they’re just too damned stupid to know the difference. This, more and more, seems to be the case. They see it done countless times and become convinced that it’s okay to write like that. Practice becomes policy, after all.

Good luck getting a job if you fill out an application or resume that way. If an application poses the question “WHEN CAN YOU START?” and the supplied answer is “2morrow,” your job-seeking effort goes from the interviewer’s desk bin to their garbage bin. It’s really that simple.

Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, gives a grammar test to all prospective employees. He explains, “If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.”

I’d also like to point out that the idiot way of writing ‘2morrow’ is actually spelling out ‘twomorrow;‘ that’s not even a real frigging word! Making up words that sound real but aren’t is called a neologism, and in some cases this can also be a sign of schizophrenia. So, in retrospect, take that extra nanosecond and replace the ‘2’ with ‘to’, or whatever the case may be. You’ll be taken more seriously- both personally and professionally.

*So ends the Grammar Nazi rant for today. We now return you to your regular internet surfing of mindless Facebook posts, stupid cat pictures, and Nicki Minaj videos*

©2013 R. Wolf Baldassarro/Deep Forest Productions