(Red)efining the English Language

Product (Red) has become so ubiquitous on the shelves of some of the nations big chain stores that I wonder if anyone actually remember what it means? I honestly didn’t and it was seeing this mug at Starbucks with the parantheses inserted into the word rediscover that made me think about it again.

In the marketing world the bastardization of the English language is more than common, but it makes me uneasy. We are losing so much of proper communication to slang and short form messaging abbreviations that I wonder what the future of language will be. In some ways we are regressing back to a simpler more hieroglyphic way of speaking to each other.

So if Starbucks and (Red) want to start retooling words for the purposes of marketing is that okay? (Red) has raised substantial sums of money to treat AIDS and malaria in Africa, so perhaps the over misuse of the parentheses is justified, and maybe this is just the evolution of our language like the oxford comma, but personally, I’m still clinging to full sentences and proper punctuation. Call me old fashioned, but it bothers me, but in this case I am willing to let it go.

What do you think?