A small pet peeve of mine (and I say this with a grin)...

[party_music50]

LOL! I loved the "eats shoots and leaves" story!

I was taught to use commas liberally, but the new standard in documentation is to avoid using commas at all costs. Sometimes the rules get changed too -- and I think that shortcuts used on the internet, in email, and especially in text-messaging are major contributors to many of the errors or mistakes that we see (and make!).

Has anyone found a smilie in a dictionary yet?

[GrannyNanny]

Yeah -- what they all said, in spades! I'm a retired English teacher, and the "pet peeves" I have over the misuse of the language would fill a good-sized volume. I have been known to take a marking pen with me and surreptitiously correct the incorrect hand-lettered signs that show up in the supermarket!
One thing about the split infinitive: I had a professor who was adamant about not splitting infinitives, so I learned quickly not to do it. However, there are cases where the split makes much more sense than the un-split -- as in someone's example of "to boldly go". Then I found out that the prohibition against splitting infinitives came from the Latin-trained scholars in the (I believe) 17th or 18th century, who tried to regularize English grammar, and since Latin was considered to be the perfect, scholarly language, they organized rules according to how Latin was constructed. This, of course, is nonsense, because English is a germanic language, with a large admixture of Norman French (and thus, ultimately, Latin) vocabulary. The Latinate languages do not split infinitives because their infinitives are only one word, usually with an "r" at the end: e.g. "to eat" in English is "comer" in Spanish. Therefore, they decided that because Latin didn't split an infinitive, then English shouldn't either, even though an English infinitive is always two words. Since I learned that, I merrily split my infinitives whenever I feel like it. So there, you snooty 18th century Latin academicians!!!!! Phyllis

[renaldo75]

Thank you for my morning chuckle, Phyllis!! I won't try to reword myself anymore. Just write it as it comes out of my head. I find myself doing that all the time since I was taught that 'of' or 'to' or _____ - the list is endless - were never to end a sentence. Not much of what I learned has consciously stayed in my head. But that is one bit of learning that has. SEEE!! I can do it!!

[felco2]

Well, now.

They're you go. There you go. Their you go.

felco2

[GrannyNanny]

Renaldo -- you are like Winston Churchill, who commented to a friend: "this kind of thing is nonsense, up with which I will not put!" There are times when ending with a preposition is by far the most sensible thing to do: "If you take this road, where do you end up?" The ones that are unnecessary are those like "Where's it at?" Isn't language wonderful? Phyllis

[ViolaAnn]

Let me add my latest version of my pet peeve - the Olympic song "I Believe". You've probably heard it. Definitely have if you are in Canada. Lovely song with a grievous grammatical error. It repeats over and over, "in the power of you and I" instead of "in the power of you and me". My English teacher must be rolling over in her grave.

Ann

[newtohosta-no more]

Okay...Here's another pet peeve of mine and it rubs me the wrong way each and every time I fill up my car with gasoline at a local gas station: A sign on the pump states "Pre-pay in Advance". Huh? I have to pay before I pre-pay??? I'm not sure if that sign comes from the local or state government.... or if it comes from the oil company. Anyone else see that sign out there on their gas pumps?

[Ginger]

My Dad used to get irritated every time he heard the old Raid commericials "Kills bugs dead" He would say, if you kill then it is dead!

Ginger

[Wheasie]

OMG - I am SO on board with this. Try grading about 30 term papers (college student believe it or not). Sometimes I feel like I need valium.

Louise

[rosemarie]

When our girls were in high school, I had kids in our house every day. I loved them they were so much fun,but they were always asking me to correct spelling or grammar and you have no idea how lax teachers were in the 60's. One idiot (And like Chris, I say that with a smile) tried to convince me his teacher encouraged them to make up words. I got to the point that I wasn't sure I could spell "cat" right. The worst words were the " ough" words. I won't even go ' their'. Now, understand I have gone over this post several times, but I may have missed something, so no critiques please.

[JaneG]

I'm in my mid-forties. I haven't been to school or written a paper that was "graded" for grammar in 25 years. I've written plenty of business papers, bid responses, technical papers, presentations, and so forth. I feel as though I'm a fairly competent writer.

But this week I started freaking out about it. I was laid off and haven't found work, so I decided to use the time to take some college classes. This week I had to write my first paper, just a short critique of a play, but style and grammar are graded. I know my spelling and word choice are decent, but I started obsessing over sentence structure and every single punctuation, comma, period, semi-colon, etc. How many times should I have to re-write a 2-and-a-half page paper?! This isn't even an English or Composition class! I will really be stressing out with those!


Speaking of writing skills, did you see this news article? The superintendent of the Detroit Public School system has problems with his written communication skills. Based on these email samples it seems like the writing skills of an elementary school student. In addition to grammar, there is a vocabulary problem here too, he uses the word "row" instead of "role" as in "What is the row of the school board?" This makes me wonder about his reading comprehension. Based on the video he appears to be an accomplished man, perhaps the real story is that despite his struggle with the written word, he has applied himself and is a success. If the man is a competent leader, has excellent verbal communication skills and can motivate and lead his staff and the teachers and students in the district, perhaps this shortcoming is forgiven. (I am still left wondering how he made it through college with this skill level.)
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index ... ident.html

[ViolaAnn]

Louise - I can relate. I ran a local Food bank for about 15 years and we hired summer students and, on several occasions, co-workers for me since I chose to work part-time. That meant reviewing a large number of applications and I put a lot of stock in the cover letter. (You wouldn't believe how many didn't bother to include one at all. They were eliminated right at the beginning). Then I carefully read each cover letter and noted run-on sentences and all sorts of other grammatical errors and blatant misspellings. Even a summer student might be asked to draft a letter for us and it's nice to know they can string a few coherent sentences together, or at least proofread well enough to catch errors.

The other thing I looked at is the the structure of the letter. This email generation tends to write formal letters the way they would write an email.

Ann
Edited because I didn't proofread well enough and let an error slip through.

[viktoria]

Another thing that annoys me is a letter starting with "My name is...". That is appropriate in a phone conversation only. I presume we all sign our letters so, if the recipient wants to know your name, he can find it at the end of the letter.

And, while we are at it: "My name is Dr. Tom Jones." I doubt it. Your name probably is Tom Jones; Dr. is your title. or "My name is Mrs. Tom Jones." Mrs. is also a title.

I'm outta here...

Viktoria

[Tigger]

If anyone is looking for a brush-up on many of these problem children in English, look for a book titled "Woe is I." (yes, once again Shakespeare used incorrect grammar in writing "Woe is me.")

I can't say I agree with the author on every point of "modern" vs. "traditional" word usage, but most of the time she's spot on, pointing out pitfalls and coming up with helpful ways to remember how to climb out of them.

http://www.amazon.com/Woe-Grammarphobes ... 594488908/

It would make a great gift for a student entering (or *shudder* graduating from) high school.

[kaylyred]

I'm a writer and editor by trade. My daughter calls me The Grammar Nazi, and my son recently told me that he used me as an example in his honors English class, saying that I was the only person he knew who told her dogs to "go lie down." (In fact, when my husband scolds the dogs saying, "Go lay down!" they just stare at him blankly. I tell him it's because they have better grammar than he does.)

I suppose you can guess how I might feel about this topic. Peevish? Yes.