What has happened to proper grammar in the English language?

That bothers me so much too! I live in the country and talking to people is practicly impossible! I don't think there is much that can be done. All I know is when I home-school my kids I'll teach them to read and write properly! Just stick to reading old books!

Languages change over time. Many of the things that bother you are probably just inevitable changes. F.ex., the distinction between may and might used to be real a generation ago and has just about disappeared now. Nothing will bring it back. Some of the other things you mention are a question of style rather than grammar, e.g., the use of incomplete sentences. It must be remembered that many of the things that are often thought to be incorrect or ungrammatical are not and never were. The schools have for decades done a miserable job of teaching grammar, one of the offenses being precisely this: claiming that many perfectly ordinary usages are supposedly incorrect, confusing grammar and style, and so on. Virtually none of the grammar rules we learned was itself fully correct. The scientific gramamrs of English correct all these errors, but these are hardly ever read by the general public, and have had almost no impact on the works that govern what is taught. The self-appointed language experts or pundits who are featured in the media and whose books are widely read usually are ignorant of or deliberate ignore the scientific research as well.

Most people have stopped editing and re-editing what they put into newspapers, magazines, billboard titles, and radio ads. For them the more they have to edit any articles, the more money they lose for their business. If the notes, memos, and letters have grammatical errors in them, then it's bad English on whomever wrote those letters to a students home. Maybe if we tried showing the people we see making these errors, we can give them a few English pointers. Plus, some people have a little trouble with punctuation, unless you were really good in English class in high school. When I write anything to anybody, I can visually see what punctuation I need, and where it needs to go. Now if that could happen worldwide, we'd all be better off. Hope that helps:)

For reals!?! Im all seein' it to!!!!!

Seriously - it bothers me a lot, especially when I see some of the "sentences" on this board and others like it. I would have to work really hard to come up with some of the phrases I’ve seen here – but sadly these people are being serious. I think part of it is the texting culture that’s making things like “ur” acceptable, and then there’s just a complete lack of understanding on the correct use of “your” and “you’re”.

I saw a VERY funny one the other day. A new VP at the company where I work part time (I’m still in high school) sent an email to the entire company. He was saying that he was seeing a lot of different functional areas of the company doing the same tasks, and he wanted to “eliminate the duplicity in the organization.” 90-plus percent of the employees didn’t even catch it. Duplicity is underhandedness or deception. Duplication is the word he was looking for. I don’t know if it’s because I’m still in high school and grammar is important to my homework, but I was one of the few people I talked to that got it. I showed the email to my mom and dad, and they didn’t get it until I pointed it out. They thought it was no big deal, that most people wouldn't see that error, and everyone would know what he meant.

I was thinking I might like to study to become an English teacher. Maybe I can make a difference.

An "incomplete sentence" isn't necessarily a grammatical error.

You also mispunctuated in several places. Relative clauses in standard English usage aren't set off by commas unless they're non-restrictive, and you omitted the serial commas in one place.

It should be "Even the notes, memos, and letters sent home from school have these errors."

and

"Every newspaper headline, magazine article, billboard, and radio ad that I see, read, or hear is full of grammatical errors."

So sad, yet true. If it's possible to feel sorry for a language, I pity poor abused lil' English.

I was watching the evening news a few nights ago & had to hit the "rewind" button on the DVR because I thought I saw the word "wheels" misspelled. Sure enough -- there it was: w-h-e-a-l-s

When I was in school, besides avoiding dinosaurs, we had to diagram sentences (anyone else remember that?), and not *just* the English teacher counted off for misspelled words.

What really makes me angry, though, is not so much the butchered grammar & mangled spelling running rampant, but the fact that so few people notice or give a damn. Don't they realize they come off as total imbeciles to those who can construct a proper sentence? Then again, maybe that doesn't matter to a moron, either.

What is proper grammar? Old English, new American English? Things change so get use to it. My guess is your not very smart if your having a hard time understanding billboards and mailed documents from school.

This is what happens with a country as diverse as America. People from every spot on the planet are here communicating with English being there 2nd or 3rd language.

How can we fix this?

Have people like you become school teachers in English.

Our society has become illiterate. Too few people read books or try to write articles. Newspapers seem to lack proofreaders and do not carefully go over what goes to press. They are into quantity and not quality.

Our educational system is a joke because countless young people graduate from high school reading at The 5th grade level. Obviously more and more money has not helped public education produce quality.

I believe schools should go back to the very fundamentals of a good education and give young people a love of reading and pride in expressing themselves verbally and in written form.

But, it is in the home and in the family where these values are taught. When a mother reads to her children or a father reads to his children they all learn to value literature and good expression. I believe home schooling families turn out educated, thinking, and articulate adults.

It's going down the drain.

Yes, it's really bad the way people are murdering the language.

I don't think much can be done to fix it. It's gone too far already.

I understand languages evolve, and it's normal, and that's the way it's always been. But it doesn't mean people should be making the huge mistakes they make, like when they say "I have went", for example. Expressions like that are becoming more and more common.

I think it's very sad. English is not my native language, but I try not to make mistakes because I really like the language, I'm a linguist, and somehow it bothers me a lot.

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Many things are going downhill. It's this entire western Fast-Food attitude. People want to get things done, they do not take pride in their work. Look at the average cars being produced today, look at the new houses. Now look at houses from the twenties or the 19th century. Look at cars, even from the fifties. Much of the fruit we buy in the stores isn't properly ripened, it was picked early and shipped to the stores to be sold, unripe. Most of us can't even tell anymore, we aren't used to good organic, properly picked fruit anyway. Going the extra mile is a waste of time, so who cares if someone gets screwwed by your actions. If you live a convenient life, why change? an who cares about good englush anyways, Im a cool guy Ive got people to see and things to do

It's a lost cause. The English language has been infected by pop culture, where it has now become cool to speak, write, and communicate like a moron. What a sad state of affairs. When some dictionaries are accepting words like 'bling' , 'fashionista', and 'emo' as proper language, we have lost it.

Oh, and those 3 words were identified when I ran the spell check.