Our Declining Language (part 9 in an endless series)

Here we are again friends, still resolutely clinging to time-honored standards of accuracy and propriety in a nation gone mad with rule breaking. Everywhere one looks, violations are increasingly flagrant—in our politics, in business, in our social interactions, and of course, in the use of our own language.

There are rules, America—hard-and-fast rules which, as of this writing, are still in place. There are correct ways to spell things. There are functions assigned to specific types of punctuation. These rules aren't our enemies; they're our friends. But my goodness, you'd never know it from the way they're flouted. Submitted as evidence: another collection of actual printed (or in one case, carved) materials for my ever-evolving wall of shame.