About the QES
The Queen's English Society was founded in 1972 by Joe Clifton, an Oxford graduate and schoolteacher. A letter he had sent to his local newspaper (the West Sussex Gazette) deploring the current decline in standards of English had resulted in so many sympathetic letters from readers that he was encouraged to form a group to try to do something about the problem. Today, we have a membership of around one thousand, mostly United Kingdom residents, but interest is growing worldwide. In the UK we have registered charity status.
English is facing demands and challenges
"Halt. Who goes there?"
"Queen's English, mate. Poor but honest. Buddy, can you spare a dime?"
"Eff off, you 'orrible shower."
The English language has had such difficulties since the time of Shakespeare and probably much earlier. Yet in a world, now increasingly spoken of as a global village, governments, multinational enterprises and Universities, are all speaking to each other in English. Thus there is a demand for the citizens of the village to learn, speak and write in English and moreover, good, clear, understandable English. As Britain itself becomes larger, by virtue of its world-wide interests, and more complicated in the 21st century, there is a similar need. Unfortunately, as the dialogue above illustrates, many people deny that there is such a need. Every time something goes wrong such as an engineering disaster or a failure on the part of the police or social services, we hear the phrase "communications failure." But nobody will plainly admit that it was a failure to read and write documents in standard English. The challenges to beautiful and concise English language come mainly from the apathy of its own users, although others come from beyond our shores. They include calls for spelling reform and the abandonment of punctuation, to name but two. The effects, combined with the development of text messaging and other global technologies, which have spawned a hybrid English, threaten the clarity and force of our "mother-tongue". English will evolve over time, but the QES exists to watch for and to resist changes that are detrimental to its impact and clarity, the latter being so important in the world we inhabit.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
With our members' support, The QES could become the recognised guardians of proper English and we would strive to halt the decline in standards in its use. We should increase our efforts to monitor the print and broadcast media, and we should support teachers in their campaign to have more time to TEACH. We can raise issues in our journal, QUEST or in our blog pages:- listen to the radio, watch television and read the papers and tell them when they have got it wrong:- form pressure groups, (branches of the Society), in your area and make yourselves known to the Education Authorities, libraries, local newspapers and broadcasters. In the workplace, we can strive to make documents clear and effective, documents that repay the effort that was put into producing them.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ADVISER - BROADCASTING
There is a website devoted to a campaign to persuade the BBC to appoint an English Language Adviser:
"The purpose of this site is to persuade the BBC to appoint a Language Adviser. This site is critical of the BBC but not inimical to it: the BBC’s best presenters and technicians stand for British excellence, but its present highest executives demean the corporation......."
Deals only with vocabulary, grammar and style.
Accent and pronunciation are not considered.
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