A Grammar Lesson

Bryan Bledsoe wrote an article for JEMS.com (found here) in order to give a grammar lesson for those writing in some official capacity (i.e.: EMS run reports). I could not agree more with what he had to say. I'm going to share some of that, and add a bit more from in and outside the realm of EMS.

You don't need an English degree to understand that phrases like "LOL" or "2morrow" do not belong in any report the fills an official capacity, or even in the corporate world. These are meant solely for the purpose of text messaging between two friends. I heard the other day (from an unofficial source) that "no one" under the age of 20 is sending emails anymore but rather relying on text messaging.

The fact that young people are using grammar like this in their every day life should worry the professional world. We don't need this kind of thing in the workplace. But what's worse is that they don't know how to use words that they attempt to use in every day life. For example:

They're/their/there
Let's start with the first one: they're. This is a contraction between the two words "they" and "are". If "they are" does not fit into the sentence, this is the wrong choice. "Their" is a plural possessive pronoun like "his" or "hers". Everything else is "there" (like "There they go.")

Some others are you're/your, were/we're and affect/effect.  Go look them up and see under what circumstances you should use each of them.

One of my pet-peeves is people typing their reports in all capital letters or, on the far extreme of things, not capitalizing anything. There is a "shift" button on the keyboard for a reason. USE IT!

Dr. Bledsoe sums up his article in saying that what EMS writes in their reports is extremely important to the ER staff. What's more important is for the ER staff to be able to understand what EMS wrote in their report. They should not have to decipher their report to determine what is really being said. Choose your words carefully and use them in an appropriate manner.