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Tom DeLay on Dancing With The Stars. This is one of those moments that's so grotesque you don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Dr. Jim Taylor: The Blogosphere Jungle
It seems that people are more likely to respond to a controversial blog post that challenges rather than buttresses their own views, so bloggers' gallant defenders are typically few and readily overwhelmed.
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For those unfamiliar with Twitter, the micro-blogging and social networking site includes a feature called "Trending Topics". This a short list of the most...
Arianna Huffington: The Apostrophe Crisis: When Perfectly Good Punctuation Goes Bad
It's Day Three of my South Pacific vacation, and I'm still obsessing. But now it's not about matters of war and peace, civil liberties, and the sorry state of the mainstream media -- it's about the growing misuse of that puny piece of punctuation called the apostrophe. Okay, I know you're thinking that the Pacific air has got to me and, instead of gaining perspective, I'm losing it. But hear me out. The phenomenon is spreading so rapidly, it's practically, well, an apostrodemic.
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A question on plural/singular possessive :
When you want to forward a Huffpost article to a friend you use the "Share" page where you are asked for the e-mail address of the person you want to forward the article to. The prompt of e-mail address is "Enter Your Friend's Email Addresses" and it is followed by two fields.
I was confused - I had only considered sending the article to one friend - but two fields? Later it dawned on me that I was being asked if I wanted to send the article to two friends and, if so, I should provide their email addresses.
I think that the punctuation is wrong - at minimum, confusing. Doesn't it ask me to provide two e-mail addresses for the same friend?
"Data" are plural. "Datum" is singular. Unless you're talking about the character, Mr. Data, from Star Trek.
One of my pet peeves is disagreement in number, i.e., singular and plural. Everyone should check their cell phone. Wrong.
Here are a few Grammar pet peeves that I have noticed while playing World of Warcraft.
Rouge, instead of Rogue (it's not a typo after the third time, and someone's defending their spelling)
Rediculous, instead of ridiculous (people defend this too), I know, ridiculout
all the theirs and thens.
I saw a lot of rouge for rogue when people were discussing Palin's book.
My grammar pet peeve is those who don't know the difference between "your" and "you're" or "their" and "they're". Or when people use "a" instead of "an".
I saw a doozy on my local TV news, Brooklyn 12, last week: A graphic used as a teaser for an upcoming story read "Grizzly Accident." I stayed tuned just to make sure that a bear wasn't run over on Flatbush Avenue.
My personal pet peeve is the misuse of the pronouns I, me, and myself. The worst is when someone says something like, "Give it to myself or Mary." Or, "It's hers and I's. Aaaaaaaarr
That one is particularly irritating, mostly because it's so easy to get it right. All you have to do is remove the other person from the sentence and see how it reads: "Give it to myself"? That's obviously wrong.
"My wife and me went to the movies." Remove "my wife": "Me went to the movies"? Again, obviously wrong, unless you're performing an old SNL "Frankenstein, Tarzan, and Tonto" sketch.
Just curious. What do you think of someone answering the question "Who's there?" by saying, "It's me"? I know it should be "It is I", but that sounds too damn stilted to me.
Yes, that does sound stilted so I solve that one by using my name. I say, " It's birchtree3".
One of my favorite books of all time: Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
To communicate clearly, precision in language, including puntuation, is essential.
The book's title comes from a story about an animal who comes into a bar, munches the bar nuts, fires a pistol into the air, and exits. The bartentender knows it was a panda, because a panda "eats, shoots, and leaves". The whole book is lighthearted and humorous, covering a subject usually delivered without humor and without a sense of the connection of grammar and the needs of regular people.
Let's start from the very beginning. A very good place to start. When you read you begin with A-B-C. Some people were taught that Y is a vowel. Pat and Vanna would be shaking their heads.
He didn't address my personal conflicts:
Please add this to your do's and don't's list. Or Dos and Donts or Dos and Don'ts
Didn't we cover this in the 3rd grade?
None of this would be an issue if children were taught grammar at school.
And penmanship! And spelling!
Grammer is having a comeback at our schools, but the parents are having to google the grammer to keep up.
Kelsey Grammer? He's in a new show called Hank. Oh, you meant grammAr. Sorry.
None of this would have been an issue, if someone like Sarah Palin had not been allowed to butcher the English language in public.
It is hypocritical to blame this on schools, and then celebrate those that assault proper grammar on a daily basis.
The fact that native speakers can't make the distinction between "your" and "you're" is what's bugging me the most. I am not a native speaker and this may sound nerdy but I LOVE proper spelling in any language. So rare yet so easy.
Or there, their, and they're.
Spelling was never easy for me. My world of words improved with spell check. I
And let's also add the misuse of: than | then
Now that we write blogs in which we don't have to use proper grammar or punctuation, no one's going to remember!
My pet peeve is sentences like "I know she's the one he knows." It should be "I know THAT she's the one WHOM he knows."
Actually, that is no longer a rule. "That" is optional in this case and "whom" is going the way of thee and thou, unfortunately. Grammar changes with time and English is a flexible language. It would be very awkward to use the sentence you constructed unless you were writing something very formal. I am a stickler for grammar and I teach ESL, but some changes we just have to get used to. I never tell me students to say, "With whom did you go to the party?" It is grammatically correct, but would mark them instantly as a non-native speaker. (Although I do prefer that they use the subjunctive "were" instead of "was" in hypothetical sentences. I'll never get used to "If I was you...")
"Tomatoe's $1.99 / lb" is standard usage at my local market. In fact, I've heard this called "the grocer's apostrophe
Just as long as you're not on the "loosing" side.
Grrrrr. Did I ever pull my hair out over that one during the election year 2008.
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First Posted: 01- 2-10 08:09 AM | Updated: 01- 2-10 11:58 AM