CNN and PBS News often bring in professorial types to explain complicated current events. Many of them begin their answer to the anchor's question with “So, ….” When did beginning an explanation with a conjunction become grammatically correct?

True, I've used conjunctions to start statements in these columns, but it was intended to add emphasis, and I often use them in fiction. But in the hundreds of seminars and classes in which I have spoken, I cannot recall ever using “yah know.” If they already knew, why would they be there?

Blame technology

When personal computers first became a fixture on adjusters' desks in the 1980s, many adjusters who had not taken typing in high school resorted to the “hunt and peck” method. Additionally, the computer geeks warned that there were only so many bits and bytes, and to economize, new abbreviations were commonly used.

I recall picking up a report from an adjuster on a workers' comp claim that had a sentence reading “the em told the me to fu on the ee.” What the heck? I asked someone who translated: “The employer told the medical examiner to follow up on the employee.” Oh. Well, it saved a few bits and bytes, but we ended up with the “Y2K” millennial problem anyway, where the year 2000 might be recorded as 1900, and millions of people would become eligible for Social Security at age 20! I recently took the “How to handle a Y2K problem” out of my textbooks — like so many earth-shaking events, it never happened, although it cost millions of dollars to prevent.

Nearly everyone is texting, with a limited number of characters allowed in the text. While that number has recently increased, the shortcuts and code words remain. For those of us who do not text, tweet, twitter or toot, it's an “OMG, what the heck is this supposed to mean” world. The kids may understand it, but can one tweet with good grammar?

Cause of overpaid claims & litigation?

As an “Iconoclast,” I'm supposed to “break images,” making my role that of a crabby, crotchety, cantankerous old curmudgeon, critical of what I see happening around me. As I'm out of the day-to-day claims reporting business I don't see many actual reports any more, but I hear about them — being submitted on computers on a multiple-choice fill-in-the-blanks basis — instead of on a full-formal captioned report. I pity the claim executives and defense attorneys who receive files of this sort and must sort through the computerized gobblety-gook in an attempt to figure out what the claims involve.

Maybe bad grammar is why there are so many over-paid claims or why so many claims end up in litigation. Maybe poor grammar is why nobody understands laws that Congress passes without Supreme Court interpretation. An insurance policy can mean different things by using the word “or” or by using the word “and.” One is exclusive, the other inclusive. But yah know….

Ken Brownlee, CPCU, is a former adjuster and risk manager based in Atlanta, Ga. He now authors and edits claims-adjusting textbooks. Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own.

Related: Addressing poor claim writing skills