For all the grammar lovers....

[Adesmar123]

 

[SallyH]

My biggest cringe is when someone says,"Joe, Susan and myself.." Fingernails on the chalkboard. If you don't use the pronoun "I" you can't say myself. Anybody old enough to remember the Excedrin commercial? "Mother, please, I'd rather do it myself!" That is the proper usage.

 

[cohenzone]

Of course the old stand by is saying, for example, "her and me" instead of "she and I" when you're describing something you did - ie. subject rather than object. The most modern grammatical aberration is the morph of "so much fun" into "so fun". "Fun" in the context where people usually say "so fun" is a noun and can't be modified correctly simply by "so" which would be an adverb in that case and not a conjunction as in "so we went to the UConn game," for example.

A lot of mistakes in e-mails and message boards are more typos and not proofing, rather than lack of grammatical awareness. "There" instead of "their" or "they're" for example. Spell and grammar check often don't help. The two little words that neither spell nor grammar checks would catch in many contexts are "not" and "now". One can appreciate the problem with written advice from an attorney that goes out "that would now be legal" instead of "that would not be legal". Hopefully context would make one or the other senseless.

 

[Kibitzer]

Permit a historical context to that business about misplacing one letter in a word. In WW II, Winston Churchill was so concerned about the damage a typo could do in messages mentioning either Ireland or Iceland that he directed message senders to specify "Ireland (r)" or "Iceland (c)" to make sure readers got it right.

Locally, I know of a lawyer who prepared a lengthy brief (a sexual matter, possibly assault or rape) and it was replete with errors that confused "causal relationship" with "casual relationship."

Back to Mark Twain:

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."​

 

[cohenzone]

Locally, I know of a lawyer who prepared a lengthy brief (a s e xual matter, possibly assault or rape) and it was replete with errors that confused "causal relationship" with "casual relationship."

A Freudian slip, perhaps.

 

[Vowelguy]

A Freudian slip, perhaps.

What does a German tripping on a banana peel have to do with any of this?

 

[cohenzone]

What does a German tripping on a banana peel have to do with any of this?

Ach, you are zliding on der zlippery zlope.

 

[ed4ourgirls]

The "her and me" problem that Cohen mentions becomes pretty obvious when
you break the double down to a single, so that "him and me went to the store"
becomes "him went to the store" or "me went to the store".

Apart from Tonto, and perhaps Tarzan, I don't think anyone would say "me went
to the store".

 

[BooRadley]

Lie and Lay offer slips to the pen
That have bothered most excellent men
You can say that you lay
In bed...yesterday;
If you do it today, you're a hen!

(I'd credit the author but I don't remember who penned it--but if I remember correctly, Who is on first base)
Boo

 

[UConnChapette]

Yup, previously posted.

Al is poking fun at the Grammar Police, as well as doing a far superior version of Blurred Lines. Its all well (why, yes, that was intentional!)

 

[Vowelguy]

Al is poking fun at the Grammar Police,

Huh?

I think he's poking fun at the kids from the smart-phone generation who have no idea how to write.

 

[Adesmar123]

Huh?

I think he's poking fun at the kids from the smart-phone generation who have no idea how to write.

Agreed.

 

[ThisJustIn]

Agreed.

Truth. EVERYone knew how to write before smart phones arrived.... Which is why I never understood Churchill's "Up with which I will not put." Makes no sense, since everyone knew how to write before smart phones...

 

[Kibitzer]

Truth. EVERYone knew how to write before smart phones arrived.... Which is why I never understood Churchill's "Up with which I will not put." Makes no sense, since everyone knew how to write before smart phones...

Will Rogers had a retort ready for the grammar police in the midst of the Great Depression. He was admonished for using "ain't." His reply:

"A lot of people who ain't sayin' 'ain't,' ain't eatin'."​

 

[Zorro]

Correct grammar is good, in its place, but so is incorrect grammer in its. Can you imagine;
"I can't get any satisfaction"
"Bobby McGee and I"
"To go boldly where no one has gone before."
"There isn't any more cane on the Brazos."
"Whoopee ki yi yo, get along little dogies, it's your misfortune it is not any of my own."
"I have you, Babe."
"It isn't me, Babe."
"Julio and I down by the schoolyard."
"You aren't anything but a hound dog!"
etc.

 

[semper]

My most hated: "I feel badly" unless the person means his/her fingers are numb.

 

[RadyLady]

Truth. EVERYone knew how to write before smart phones arrived.... Which is why I never understood Churchill's "Up with which I will not put." Makes no sense, since everyone knew how to write before smart phones...

Well using the commonly used sentence structure, the saying would be "which I will not put up with" which is incorrect because you're ending the sentence with a preposition.

In the current vernacular the rules regarding prepositional phrases and so forth are essentially forgotten unfortunately though the Churchill quote does sound very archaic

 

[Kibitzer]

Well just saying would be "which I will not put up with" which is incorrect because you're ending the sentence with a preposition.

In the current vernacular the rules regarding prepositional phrases and so forth are essentially forgotten unfortunately though the Churchill quote does sound very archaic

And the rule is:

"Never use a preposition to end a sentence with."​

And a couple more:

"Avoid cliches like the plague."
"Remember to never split an infinitive."
"Never, ever use repetitive redundancies."
"Use parallel structure when you write and in speaking."
"The rigid rule of 'i before e except after c' raises spelling to a sceince."
​

And there are dozens more where these came from.

 

[RadyLady]

LOL!!!!!

 

[Zorro]

In his fine book "The Language Instinct" Steven Pinker devotes a delightful chapter to poo-pooing a lot of the prescriptionist nonsense of the "Language Mavens"; splitting infinitives (we aren't supposed to because the Romans didn't. Actually, of course, the Romans COULDN'T, since their infinitives were single words), ending sentences with prepositions, etc. He either creates or quotes a great sentence that ends with a string of five prepositions; A child has come upstairs to reat a bedtime story to his child, who asks him;

"What did you bring that book that I don't like to be read to out of up for?"


Whoops! After I posted the above I was browsing, and found the whole chapter to which I referred. If anyone is really interested in this sort of thing, it is a very good read. Here is the url;

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html

 

[Zorro]

And the rule is:

"Never use a preposition to end a sentence with."​

And a couple more:

"Avoid cliches like the plague."
"Remember to never split an infinitive."
"Never, ever use repetitive redundancies."
"Use parallel structure when you write and in speaking."
"The rigid rule of 'i before e except after c' raises spelling to a sceince."
​

And there are dozens more where these came from.

As "the Old Timer" used to tell Fibber' "That's pretty good, Johnny, but that ain't the way I heard it." The way I heard it, you should never end a sentence with a preposition unlless you can't find anything else to end it with."

 

[CallMeBruce]

Split infinitives are a nonsense rule. That's from Latin, because infinitives in Latin are one word, and as such, cannot be split. That isn't the case in English, so split away!

 

[RadyLady]

or you could argue that because the Latin could not be split, therefore the English should not be split

 

[cohenzone]

Correct grammar is good, in its place, but so is incorrect grammer in its. Can you imagine;
"I can't get any satisfaction"
"Bobby McGee and I"
"To go boldly where no one has gone before."
"There isn't any more cane on the Brazos."
"Whoopee ki yi yo, get along little dogies, it's your misfortune it is not any of my own."
"I have you, Babe."
"It isn't me, Babe."
"Julio and I down by the schoolyard."
"You aren't anything but a hound dog!"
etc.

As youse know, me written some stuff. Me characters ain't great examples of good grammar. Never use grammar check,ever. It just doesn't get using bad grammar to further characterization. No doubt as u and me no, Weird Al is definitely having so fun with the text only generation.

 

[Kibitzer]

or you could argue that because the Latin could not be split, therefore the English should not be split

Aha! You brought up Latin, such a dead language that we (mis)use much of it daily. Permit four examples:

etc. -- means "and so forth" and is tacked on at the end of many lists. Useful and ubiquitous.

et al -- means "and others," used like etc. but limited to lists of people. Handy and useful.

i.e. -- in Latin, id est; in English, it sort of clarifies by saying, in effect, "that is (to say. . .)." When you use it, go for the small letters with periods ("IE" won't get it).

e.g. -- one of my favorites; in Latin, exempli gratia; in English, "for example." Often overlooked or, worse yet, ignored in favor of (incorrect) the aforementioned i.e. It's easy to add this useful abbreviation to your arsenal. Go for it.​