I’ve quoted Kory Stamper before and designated her my favorite lexicographer-blogger, a designation that shall always be so. Apparently yesterday was National Grammar Day, and .
I have a friend–well, a “friend” – who, every March 4th, marches forth into a variety of local stores with a black marker and corrects the signage in the name of “good grammar.” Grocer’s apostrophes are scribbled out, misspellings fixed, and good Lord the corybantic orgy of less/fewer corrections. This friend also printed up a bunch of stickers one year that read, “FIXED THAT FOR YOU. HAPPY NATIONAL GRAMMAR DAY.”
When he was finished telling me about how he observes National Grammar Day, he waited for me to break into a big smile and congratulate him. So when I didn’t – when, instead, my face compressed itself ever so slightly into a look of utter distaste – he was very confused. “Seriously,” he said, “don’t tell me that’s not awesome.”
Reader: that is not awesome.
Yes, I know, the grocer’s apostrophe is a weeping pustule on the shining face of English, and people who don’t know the difference between “less” and “fewer” should be marooned on a small, ice-covered island in the Arctic Sea. You, as a person of intelligence, are entitled to that opinion. I will defend to the death your right to think that “less” and “fewer” should only be used in very specific ways (even though history proves you wrong), and I will even agree that I don’t understand how the grocer’s apostrophe came to be (though apostrophes can be tricky, and we know all how weird English plurals can be). What I cannot defend, however, is asshattery in the name of grammar.
You may think you are some great Batman of Apostrophes, flitting through the dark aisles of the Piggly-Wiggly, bringing Truth and Justice to tormented signs everywhere! But in reality, you are a jerk who has defaced a sign that some poor kid, or some poor non-native English speaker, or some educated and beleaguered mom who is working her second job of the day, spent time making. It’s not as though they see your handiwork and fall to their knees praising John Dryden because now they see the error of their ways. No–all they see is that the manager is going to make them do the sign again. And they may not have the education to understand why you took a Sharpie to their “2 tomato’s / $1″ sign.
….The reality is that many of the bits of grammar that we think of as wrong are actually just a matter of preference.
Remember, this National Grammar Day, that there are people all around you with varying degrees of knowledge of and appreciation for the intricacies of English. Instead of calling people out on March 4th for all the usages they get wrong, how about pointing out all the thing things that people–against all odds–get right? Can you correctly pronounce “rough,” “though,” “through,” and “thought”? Congratulations, you have just navigated the Great Vowel Shift. If I ask you to come up with synonyms of “ask” and you respond with “question” and “inquire,” congratulations: you have seamlessly navigated your way through 500 years of English history. Do you end sentences in prepositions? That is awesome, because that is a linguistic and historical tie back to Old English, the dyslexic-looking Germanic language that started this whole shebang almost 1500 years ago.
There is so much to celebrate about our language. English may be a shifty whore, but she’s our shifty whore. Please, this National Grammar Day, don’t turn her into a bully, too.
It’s no secret that I have certain grammar peeves, but I completely agree with this. When living in the UK, I was constantly criticized for my “improper use of English” and in fact was told repeatedly that I do not in fact even speak English, but instead “American” because, for example, I would say, “I don’t have a pen” instead of “I haven’t got a pen”, or would use the word “gotten”, which apparently is like declaring oneself a genocidal maniac, as is saying “disoriented” instead of “disorientated” and DO NOT EVEN GET ME GOING ON THAT RANT RIGHT NOW. So I quickly learned that a whole lot of grammar “rules” are purely regional and arbitrary and that, seriously, some people need to calm their shit down about it.
And now that I’m a second-language learner, I have boundless sympathy for speakers of English as a second language – like a lot of the people making the signs we all laugh at. Of course I’m irritated when my college-educated American friend’s use apostrophe’s on plural noun’s, ahem, but what kind of asshole runs around town with a Sharpie and defaces public signs just to Teach People A Lesson? Aren’t there more important things to fight against in America these days? Impending economic collapse, I’m just saying.
Anyway, here’s a bit I love from Stamper post:
When my children were little, they learned that the word “wedgie” referred to “the condition of having one’s clothing wedged between the buttocks,” as the Collegiate so toffishly puts it. They were absolutely ecstatic: here was a word for this thing that happened to them pretty much constantly! And it was a good word, too, a word that had great screechability and ended in a long-e for maximum sustain. Best of all, it had to do with butts. For about three days, both the six-year-old and the two-year-old hollered the word “wedgie” constantly.
Now, like most parents with young children, my husband and I were desperate for some little veil of ivoried respectability to drape over this big, nekkid waller of parenthood that was so often punctuated (primarily in public spaces, usually with a finger or two up a nostril) with “MAMA! I HAVE A WEDGIE!” So I told my kids not to call it a “wedgie” — I told them to call it “an issue.”
They did, for many years. And while people may have cocked their heads to hear a worried-looking preschooler say, “Mama, I have an issue,” the veil of respectability slid artfully into place. For a while.
The day soon came when both my children learned that when other people use the word “issue,” they are not referring to wedgies. They are referring to vital and unsettled matters that generally require discussion.
“Yes,” I answered, as my eldest explained this to me in tones of deep-purple mistrust, “but isn’t a wedgie basically the same thing in our house? Besides, no one else knew what we were talking about. They thought that you were just deeply interested in the election.”
She frowned so deeply that the tip of her nose met her eyebrows. “But you write dictionaries: you knew it wasn’t like that in the real world.”
Heh.
I can’t say it any better than James Nicoll:
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
My personal pet peeve – much to Mrs. RedState’s dismay, is to become irate when someone refers to something as “For Free”. I really can not stand it. If an item is “Free”, it isn’t “For” anything – yes?
So when an advertiser announces “Buy one, get one for free!” it makes me nuts. Shouldn’t the correct wording be “Buy one get one free”? Or if smething is offered as a bonus, it isn’t “For Free”, it is simply “Free”. And really, if you think about it, the BOGO folks – they’re really saying you’re getting two for the price of one… But I digress… nothing is “For free” if an item has no cost, it is simply “Free”. Please feel free to correct and or educate me on this issue. Thank you.
My personal pet peeve – much to Mrs. RedState’s dismay, is to become irate when someone refers to something as “For Free”. I really can not stand it. If an item is “Free”, it isn’t “For” anything – yes?
So when an advertiser announces “Buy one, get one for free!” it makes me nuts. Shouldn’t the correct wording be “Buy one get one free”? Or if something is offered as a bonus, it isn’t “For Free”, it is simply “Free”. And really, if you think about it, the BOGO folks – they’re really saying you’re getting two for the price of one… But I digress… nothing is “For free” if an item has no cost, it is simply “Free”. Please feel free to correct and or educate me on this issue. Thank you.
@RedStateNJ: Write one comment and the second comment is
forfree! ; )RG FTW! :-D
I used to be a real grammar Nazi, but experience and age have mellowed me. The box of pet peeves is getting smaller and smaller. But “orientate” is still in there…
Many years ago I was in London (where I lived) and I was perusing my A-Z street guide. A very nice middle aged English lady came up and asked if I knew where, I dunno, “Poodle Court” was. I said I wasn’t sure but would she like to borrow my “Eh to Zee” and find her way?
She turned up her nose and said: You mean your “Eh to Zed.”
So I smiled as nicely as a southern boy can and asked if she still wanted to borrow it now that I’d been corrected. She did an awesome double-take, gave me a wicked smile from her 20’s, and borrowed my book.
I loved living in the UK, even though I never could find an Aluminium can….
_XC
RG – touche!
I couldn’t figure out how to edit my first comment to correct the misspelling of “Something”… My first comment had it a “Smething” – I’m not sure what “Smething” is, but I think it may be akin to “Smeet” which was the version of Spam handed out to the masses at the end of Waterworld…
AS… Oh for God’s Sake!
@RedStateNJ: Stop smething around.
Ok, I guess this is an excuse to get language gripes off our collective chest, so here’s mine.
I cringe at the daily abuse I hear of reflexive pronouns. “Could you just fill that in and return it to myself”. It’s getting worse as well but it just isn’t done to shout “ME, FOR GOD’S SAKE ME”across the office.
BTW, my software geek’s trick for remembering the less/fewer thing. If you can count it with an integer, then the word is fewer. If you need a floating point variable, then it’s less.
I generally avoid soap operas, but I confess to watching ‘Coronotion Street’ sometimes – hey, it’s set in a fictional place that’s supposed to be around five miles from where I live, and it has warm humour as well as drama, and well…OK, I’ll shut up now. I never claimed not to be a sad case!
Anyway, when my American ex-girlfriend came over to stay, I had to translate the dialogue for her. I was a bit
Sorry – I don’t know what happened to the last of my comment. I was going to say that I was a bit mystified myself at times; I don’t know anyone who says “‘appen” rather than “maybe”. We do have cobbles at the back of our house, though (although we have an asshole cat rather than whippets).
When I was with my ex-wife, we lived close to an adult education centre. They used to put out their wheelie bin for collection every week and it had on it, in yellow paint, “Adut Education Centre”.
*Facepalm*
My favorite Wyoming joke about grammar: A Wyoming student got into Harvard and walked around on his first day, marveling at the campus. He stopped another student and asked:
“Do you know where the library is at?”
The other student sneered at him. “Here at Harvard,” he sniffed, “We do not end our sentences in a preposition.”
The Wyoming student blinked at him, nodded, and replied: “Do you know where the library is, a**hole?”
Over at Flickr.com, there is a group called , with 481 members and 1,137 items posted. My humble contribution can be found
@RG: My lawyer will be contacting you regarding my ruined keyboard, diet coke-filled sinuses and strained stomach muscles. I have never seen a case of such perfect timing and intonation done in a comment section. It was like you and RedState were working together a la Abbott and Costello. Hat’s off to you both.
@T Rich: Aw, dammit. Hats off? My hat’s off? Smething like that!
.
.
.
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See what I did there?
The Internet is full of people who are indignantly aggrieved at grammatical errors fancied and real. In olden times, the Letters to the Editor section would be full of such peevish rants. After I had been an editor for a while I kind of felt like Kory Stamper–three cheers for anyone who gets it right! English is a shifty whore indeed.
When anyone gets on his high horse about their “pet grammar peeves” I ask if he can name the parts of speech, or if he was aware that pronouns have cases that dictate their use, or if he knows the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb, or between a direct and indirect object. If the answer is no, which it is if he attended public school in the US, I suggest not getting too smug about this stuff. Most of my fellow editors cannot answer any of those questions, and they get paid the big bucks for expertise!
@T Rich: He set it up so perfectly, I couldn’t resist. :)
I don’t correct other people’s grammar; I just silently judge. But I will say I have absolutely no respect for anyone who defaces private property–or public (taxpayer) property, for that matter.
When it comes to grammar pet peeves, my biggest is that the people who are most uppity about using correct grammar are usually the same ones who have no clue how to correctly use the pronoun “I.”
Does this bug anyone else?
Sorry, my bad.
What do you mean, “bad” grammar? Don’t you mean “poor” grammar?
@Russell:
No. I swear that I saw grammar out back, smoking cigarettes and stealing lunch money.
Hey, I’m just happy when they get looser and loser right.
Can’t contribute to the Grocer’s Apostrophe discussion as I’m still mourning the demise of the Oxford comma. *sniff*
@Roy: There, their, they’re. ;)
@Rachel:
It does beg the question: at what point do divergent dialects become separate languages? I suspect that British English and American English may have greater differences than some supposedly separate languages (such as Flemish and Dutch, or Serbian and Croatian), but regional differences may be greater still; the word “ignorant”, for example, has much the same meaning in most of England and America (as far as I am aware), but has a rather different meaning in (some parts of?) Scotland.
Odd – I would use either phrase interchangeably.
Outside of the cliche “ill-gotten gains”, “gotten” has a distinctly archaic sound to it (to my ears).
I won’t, I won’t… :)
I wanted to add smething, but I forgotted it…
I think most people in this thread are confusing poor grammar with poor style.
English is indeed a shifty whore, but I don’t throw stones. People tend to throw them back. Sometimes their aim is a lot better than mine.
But I do enjoy spotting egregious slips coming from people who really should know better. My favorite AP headline last week was from a story on how people’s aquarium discards were becoming a nuisance out west, multiplying and endangering native species.
The headline read, GIANT GOLDFISH THREATENS LAKE TAHOE.
Irregardless of Stamper’s views, grammatical errors literally make me sick. Your only demonstrating ignorance when you make these misteaks.
I appreciate someone’s correcting my mistakes. Thus, by the Golden Rule, I correct others’ mistakes when I can do so discreetly.
I reserve my indignance for modern public school teachers who don’t bother to correct their pupils’ mistakes.
@Libby: Do I have to point out that you used Your instead of You’re?
Ignorance is as ignorance does.
My son who is autistic is unable to spell, but he is very talented at art and maths. Does that make him ignorant? No. He would not be so ignorant as to upbraid someone for their spelling mistakes.
[Tolbert, I’m pretty sure she was being sarcastic, hence the “irregardless” and the “literally” and the “misteaks”, etc :) – Rachel]
@Tolbert: Re: @Libby: Oh, more than that. Parody.
@Tolbert: It was just a failed attempt at humor; just trying to sound like a grammar Nazi who inevitably makes some sort of typo/error themselves when correcting others. Rachel had posted about pet peeves a few months back & a few of the most common commenter entries were about “literally” and “irregardless”, etc.
@physics geek: har!
@Simon Jester: ” haven’t got ” is the more common where I live.
It is a rarified pleasure not merely to speak Truth to Power, but also to make fun of its grammar and syntax. But the serious part is the meaning of language itself, whose defense is vital to the defense of civilization against barbarism. If words have no fixed meaning, how can we reason and if we cannot reason what is left but force? Perhaps in the end, force is all there is, but the longer we put off that end the better. In the end, of course, the barbarians are welcomed in because the lies have become too much to keep up and everyone agrees that the barbarians, for all their lamentable behavior, are at least honest.
My most recent effort at self-improvement has involved trying to stop myself saying “I’ve got” – it’s redundant, and takes more characters (yes, I’ve let twitter affect my daily life, somebody help me!).
As I mentioned to someone else just the other day, I try to limit my going grammar-nazi to people I believe will appreciate it; no need irking someone who doesn’t care. Most recently, I explained the difference between object and subject pronouns, e.g. “between him and me”.
Fuck yeah! English is a shifty whore! I LOVE THIS!!!
Depending on the situation, how tired/drunk I am and who I’m talking to (some of my worst grammar gets directed at my brother – privilege of family, ya know), in addition to the two above, I might mix the two together and say, “I don’t got a pen.” Or “I aint got a pen,” or even, “I ain’t got no pen for you, butthead.”
From my experiences reading and watching TV, it seems that standard American English and standard British English are quite similar. It’s the colloquial American and British English that really diverge.
Don’t forget the cardinal sin of using the word “aint”. That immediately labels a person a hick from “flyover country” to be mocked and ridiculed. Even though that hick might have a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering.
Me thinks their will be some peeps that will dislike the grammer police no matter if thay have gotten a good edumacation or not, no matter where’s they got it at.
My hubby and me got are traneing in the good ole state of Okleehoma and have very sucksessful jobs dispite Okleehoma beeing ranked #50 in the states for edumacation.
And we got it for free. That’s how good this state on getting studence orientated.
Irregardless of what others think of our speeking and spellin abilities, we do just fine at are jobs at taco bell.
Your not subposse to juge others so me don’t.
It ain’t no fun sometimes, but that’s how I role.
@Tolbert: Do you mind me asking which part of the world you come from?
Hey, you know what you can get at the grocer’s?
I’m an admitted grammar nazi whore, but I’ve never corrected anything but hand-lettered signs that were held up with scotch tape. “The meeting is in the auditorium. Please use the south door’s.”
I worked my way through college as a tutor at my state university’s writing center, so I had to become an expert at knowing this stuff and really good at explaining it, often to foreign engineering students. I had to come up with examples on the fly because I had only a half an hour session per student. It becomes part of one’s DNA after a while.
My biggest pet peeves are my boys’ teachers’ emails, school fliers sent home, and posts on the the schools’ websites that demonstrate a serious lack of knowledge of grammar and punctuation. Its/It’s Whose/Who’s Their/There/They’re.
Of course I grew up to be an editor. It’s kind of a curse because you never stop proofreading the world, but I often type the wrong its/it’s when I’m tired and not paying attention. Even the nazis make mistakes.
For those who really love their punctuation, ya gotta love the Oatmeal’s
Few things beat a good grammar poat and thread. I relate most closely to Jim Carson’s comment:
It is not just that they don’t correct their students, they often use bad habits themselves and with other teachers. Just last night we were sitting next to four loud women in an Applebees(don’t judge me, my wife loves their Sangria) whose conversation clearly showed them all to be teachers. Their unavoidably loud conversation covered their sex lives in both crude terms and terminology. I think the most common word ending a sentence was ‘at’.
I will offer a possible answer to the initial question RedstateNJ posed. Feel free to diminish my ignorance. The word for refers to cost assignation.
Example:
‘What cost is associated with obtaining this object?’
‘You can have it for $19.95.’ (Not ‘You can have it $19.95’)
‘You can have it free.’ does imply that you will get the object at no cost, but when price is in question, I don’t think the for is necessarily incorrect. Grammatically, the word ‘for’ reinforces that a price of $0 has been assigned whereas the bald statement ‘You can have it free’ (without just giving it) implies a catch. If there was not a catch, you would not need to say ‘You can have it free’ You could just give it.
Abused apostrophes? .
Correcting grammatical errors is perhaps a bit boorish, but nothing will stop me from making inferences when I see them. Essentially, my policy is this: if you are a native speaker and cannot reliably distinguish, say, between your/you’re/yore/yaw I will assume you are a dullard.
DEK’s point is well-made. Mere syntactical errors such as lapses in punctuation are one thing, but words contain semantic content. The difference between, for example, ‘disinterested’ and ‘uninterested’ is both subtle and important. I don’t care who wins the Superbowl because I am uninterested in American football. That would hardly do were I one of the officials, but it is to be hoped I would nonetheless be disinterested in the outcome.
Whenever you are tempted to correct grammar on the internet, remember Skitt’s Law:
Do we really need to delineate different kinds of assholes? Isn’t one universal word for the kind of asshattery in question sufficient to indicate serious and sufficiently deep social opprobrium?
I once occasionally did the Grammar Nazi thing, but nowadays, about the only time I rip someone a new apostrophe in their vowel hole is when they do something ephtarded at the same time as claiming they’re smarter than the person they’re criticizing.
I mean, if you’re calling someone stupid, you REALLY should have the sense to get your grammar right, at least while you’re doing it…
“Jus’ sayin'”
:-D
Rachel, when you’re in the UK, the answer to this sort of asshattery is really obvious:
… BY the way, the fun part then is to wait for the asshat to try and tell you that “Churchill never said that” — then be prepared with some snarky response, like:
@Tuerqas: Thank you for your poat…
@IGotBupkis, Legally Defined Cyberbully in All 57 States: Oh lordie lordie, don’t get me started on Teh Interwebbie practice of tacking absolutely anything and everything thyat seems clever onto a picture of somebody famous and then claiming they said it.
After years of checking such things I’ve determined the ratio of falsely atttributed quotes to real ones is about 20 to 1, and that’s on the good days. And of the real ones, most are ripped so far out of context as to be meaningless in the context presented.
Ah, well. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, “The problem with quotations on the internet is that they are so difficult to verify.”
My neighbor and dear, dear friend tells a great (one of many) story about being a very young girl with an older boy cousin who, when they were together, would refer to her as “little turd”. Now, as she told it, this was always said with a smile and soft affectionate voice so she took it as a sign of love and closeness. She thought she knew what the word meant.
Now imagine her surprise when years later, during dinner with her boyfriend’s family, said boyfriend said something and she smiled and replied in that same soft sweet tone, “You little turd!” and the table went silent.
Personally, I constantly get it wrong when I write our company newsletter. This is why I say, “English is my secret language.”
@Libby: When your right, your right!