Grammar Nazi musings

Schedulers who can't spell or punctuate drive me nuts. Editors who "correct" my already correct sentences (and turn them into gibberish) drive me to drink. If we are required to have high standards, why aren't they? Does this bother anyone else?

My pet peeve is misplaced apostrophes. What is your pet grammar peeve?

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pretty much everything

There are too many examples to quote, but I may try to find them later. My biggest pet peeve lately is the "dangling so" at the end of a statement. What is that? A question? You lost your train of thought? I want to smack the person that does this upside the head every time I hear it.

proudly shopping in the D.

Perhaps a good smack would kickstart the obviously stalled brain?

LOL @stormraven73, I would hope so.

proudly shopping in the D.

I don't usually use it at the end of a statement...so...what do you think? LOL!

@PaulinMI wrote:

There are too many examples to quote, but I may try to find them later. My biggest pet peeve lately is the "dangling so" at the end of a statement. What is that? A question? You lost your train of thought? I want to smack the person that does this upside the head every time I hear it.

To be, or not to be... To split an infinitive, or to not split an infinitive...To split an infinitive, or not to split an infinitive...

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao-Tzu

To boldly split infinatives that no man has split before...

Misusing "they're" "their" & "there", along with the misuse of "your" & "you're" wrankle me a bit!

Meme spotted yesterday: Confusing "your" and "you're" is like mixing up "catastrophe" and "cat a$$ trophy"

My favorite.

Let's eat Grandma!.
Let's eat, Grandma!
Punctuation saves lives.

Equal rights for others does not mean fewer rights for you. It's not pie.
"I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag." -Molly Ivins
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of your time and it really annoys the pig.

And apparently prevents people from becoming cannibals.

Mine is the use of your and you're incorrectly. It isn't that hard to know which one to use in a sentence. Does you are make sense in your sentence? If not, your should go in place of you're....

I personally really struggle with how to use there and their correctly...

Shopping Idaho and Oregon/Idaho border region.

My husband emails me and texts me with incorrect usage of to and too, which drives me crazy, but I learned a long time ago to not say anything about it. And he is a very intelligent person (but sensitive, LOL)! He has a great math brain and can compute numbers in his head effortlessly. His usage of grammar verbally is perfect, but in writing, not always. But he doesn't have to do it with his job...

"Should of"

"If you have a question, ask Sue or myself."

Or "... ask Sue or I."

Something about saying "me" seems too simple. I think people use the wrong word because they think it sounds fancier.

In the training for my brief editing stint, the training materials noted in a list of commonly misspelled words "fettucini." Ummm, it's fettuccine. I wonder how many times the reports get changed to the wrong spelling.

I try to overlook mistakes, especially in texts and other casual use. However, often "I am silently correcting your grammar."

"It piqued my curiosity" (some people use peeked), "the subject is mute" (they mean moot)...there are so many more.

Loose instead of lose.

I have edited guidelines (once) and sent them back to the MSC with corrections. There were five errors in these three pages of guidelines. What was really funny was that they had some sample narrative in those guidelines that they had labeled as "exemplary" and three of the errors were in those two paragraphs, LOL. The next month the guidelines had been updated with the corrections!

It all drives me bananas!

I hate seeing the schedulers and the guidelines with grammatical errors; it makes my hair stand on end like fingernails on a chalkboard!

My husband tells me that I should edit for various people and places. In the past, I would receive weekly letters from teachers that my kids had, and there would be errors every time. And the monthly letters from the school itself were horrendous. Why wouldn't companies, institutions of education, and people who want to appear smart *NOT* proofread, at the very least? Or possibly hire an editor?

And "legal notices" that come in the mail from my small hometown are just awful! They are so poorly written that it is difficult to follow what it is that they are *actually* trying to say!

If you ever get housebound for some reason, there is an editing job waiting for you somewhere. The only issue will be if you have the patience for it and don't tear out your hair first screaming about the idiot who wrote a report and could not manage to put forth some simple sentence structures without glaring spelling and grammatical errors (happens usually after about the 20th report like that). Your family might lock you up in a padded room!

On that note, don't you hate it when you read the flippin' NEWSPAPER and find 3-5 errors...just on the first page? I had to cancel the paper based on that. What is a newspaper editor for? I used to think that would be such a cool job.

I cringe at ads and store signs with glaring grammatical errors. Misplaced apostrophes, misspelled words, and the ubiquitous "y'all" come to mind. Copy editing is a lost art.

I heard somewhere that in recent times, newspapers articles are written for an audience with a reading comprehension level of fifth-seventh graders. Astonishing, to say the least!

Additionally, I went into an alternative school last week. They focus on the kids getting a GED, for the most part. Some of the kids are put into classrooms to try to get their diplomas. Some of the "classroom kids" are 22. Seventh grade is the reading comprehension level for all assignments and all tests at this school. :'(

Basic standards have dropped drastically, and we are truly "dumbing down" a large segment of the youth in this country.

@stormraven73 wrote:

I cringe at ads and store signs with glaring grammatical errors. Misplaced apostrophes, misspelled words, and the ubiquitous "y'all" come to mind. Copy editing is a lost art.

Have you ever seen store signs with the "Y" and "N" placed BACKWARDS??? That drives me cuckoo!!!

@ Stormraven 73.
I hate it when I get a shop returned with a comment that says "You grammar not correctly, and I may chagnes to your report". I don't understand! It's like a slap in the face.

@RoastieToast lmao, I've never had one that bad, but I've had a few that were head-scratchers!

On another thread, I was informed in bold-face that 'Wala!'shall not be allowed as a language-play version of 'Voila!' (Perhaps if we use this misused silliness often enough, everyone will become accustomed to it and no one will bother us about it

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao-Tzu

Those are some real head scratchers for sure! I hate it when I have an editor reply that there were a "few grammatical errors." Sometimes I write complex sentences to get my point across effectively, and things such as punctuation, subject/verb agreement, and basic sentence structure may not be what some people are used to. However, it is written correctly. I just wonder how they change my report to "make it right," and that frustrates me.

I also had a scheduler tell me that I used quotes incorrectly and said that she changed my whole report to make sure that the quotes were corrected. I got a lower grade for that. That was also a very frustrating situation, because I am 100% certain of how to use quotes.

Would it fun to submit the same writing sample to multiple editors and find out how each editor responds to it?

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao-Tzu

@Shop-et-al wrote:

On another thread, I was informed in bold-face that 'Wala!'shall not be allowed as a language-play version of 'Voila!' (Perhaps if we use this misused silliness often enough, everyone will become accustomed to it and no one will bother us about it

It's not or it shouldn't be. I don't even know what "Wala!" is. The only instance I could possibly imagine using a "word" like that would be witnessing someone not paying attention run into something and yelling "Oh Oh! Wala!" while LMAO.

proudly shopping in the D.

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