So there I was the other day, just out of a local government meeting and badly in need of a caffeine fix.

I pulled in to the parking lot, got out of my car, went straight to the coffee dispenser and drew myself a tall cup of joe.

Standing in line waiting to pay for my java and a cookie I had decided would go nicely with it, a display at the cash register caught my eye.

It was a box containing these colored doohickeys designed to make it easier for smokers to extinguish their cigarettes and save them for later consumption. Jewel snuffers, I believe they were called.

On the box was one of those stand-up display cards, and printed on it was a line of copy that nearly caused me to lose my grip on my Styrofoam coffee cup when I read it.

“Never waist another cigarette,” it read.

The first thought that came into my mind was that it was the second-funniest misuse of the homonyms “waist” and “waste” I’d ever seen.

The funniest? Well, that would be a newspaper article (not from this publication, thankfully) from a few years back about a police officer who accidentally shot himself in the leg. The officer’s gun, the article stated, was in a holster attached to a belt around his “waste.”

To quote Cleveland from “Family Guy,” “That’s nasty!”

My second thought was a bit more serious. It was a of a discussion I’d participated in a few days earlier on Facebook.

The gist of said discussion was that the illiterate and the semi-literate seem to have taken over our society. Or, at the very least, they are winning.

(One of the participants suggested that a short community-college course in understanding those folks might not be a bad idea, seeing as how they’re not going anywhere, they’re not going to change and they do have things of importance to say.)

It’s also worth mentioning that the gentleman who started the topic was inspired to do so by a sign he’d seen in his neighborhood touting a “Hugh Yard Sale.”

How ironic is it that in a day and age when we communicate via the written word more than perhaps at any other time in human history, peoples’ abilities to spell and to write coherently seem to be worse than they’ve ever been in human history?

Or, perhaps the emergence of the Internet as a primary means of communication has simply exposed how bad peoples’ spelling and grammatical skills were to begin with.

Seriously, at what point did we decide the ability to spell correctly and to write semi-coherently was no longer important?

Look, I am by no means trying to say that I believe all people who lack spelling and grammatical skills are all stupid. I know that isn’t the case.

The sad thing is, though, the lack of said skill still makes them look like they are.

If you post a message on an online bulletin board that’s so rife with misspellings it can’t be comprehended, how can you possibly expect anyone to take what you have to say seriously?

I mean, if every other word in this column was spelled incorrectly, would you take anything I have to say seriously — not that I am under the illusion that anyone does, mind you?

More importantly, if you show up for a job interview with a resume where every other word is misspelled, chances are, that employer is going to tell you to keep on walking — and show your resume to everyone in the office to laugh at after you’ve left.

That is, unless the guy in charge can’t spell or write, either, and sees absolutely nothing wrong with it.

And that, my friends, is the direction I fear we’re heading.

KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.