As a child of the eighties and nineties, I remember my English teachers being quite critical about grammar and the differences between the spoken and written word. “In formal writing,” preached one, “Never write in the manner as how you would speak.” Exceptions to this rule were only made if we were to quote another person or if our compositions were story-based and contained some form of dialogue. Even then, we had to be careful how we phrased our written “spoken” words. I do accept, however, that language is always evolving. We gain new words and invent new descriptive phrases every decade. “Google” for example is now widely accepted as a verb and is synonymous with “search” or “look up”. Back in my schooling days, starting a paragraph with “and” or “but” was a cardinal sin, only to be forgiven if we could prove that it was a calculated piece of writing designed to make an emphasis and draw attention to the point we were trying to make in that paragraph. Nowadays it is simply a way of starting a paragraph. I cringe, but I do acknowledge that unfortunately, that is how people speak and write in modern times. The sciences, as well are ever-evolving. Yet I doubt that nature evolves as quickly as language, unless you subscribe to the words of Charles Xavier (aka Professor X of the X-Men). I quote: “Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.” In the Home section of this Friday’s (24th January 2014) Straits Times, there is an article – rather soulless, in my opinion – describing the quiet, close-to-nature lifestyle to be found on St. John’s Island. Besides some of the, I suppose, archaic writing “sins” described above, the writers go on to describe the island’s dolphin visitors as travelling in “shoals”. I froze for a moment as I read that sentence. Surely I am not so cut-off from the world, that I missed an earth-shattering evolutionary announcement that dolphins were now considered fish! If memory and education serve me well, the most widely accepted collective noun used to describe a group of dolphins is “pod”, as in “a pod of dolphins”. The terms “school” and “team” have also been used, although not as commonly. A “shoal” on the other hand, is used to describe fish. Now, if I am wrong, there can only be two possible explanations. One: I failed to pay attention in both my English and Science lessons in primary school. Two: As mentioned above, I am behind in the news of Science and Environment, and dolphins have actually been discovered to be cold-blooded fish rather than warm-blooded marine mammals. As I am pretty confident that I am NOT wrong, one then wonders about the writers (perhaps the editors as well, for missing this) of this article. This one sentence describing “shoals of dolphins” seems to display a lack of basic knowledge of the natural sciences, and a poor grasp of grammatical rules. Supporters of the Straits Times and the writers may argue that it is an insignificant and quite likely careless error. For this reader on the other hand, careless mistake or not, the damage is done.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 08:12:50 +0000