I find it odd that people turn down free knowledge. Whereas auto mechanics and doctors are routinely pestered by family and friends for free advice, no one ever bothers the Grammar Nazis. Why is this? I realize it’s no longer fashionable to come off as overly intelligent or eloquent, but that’s no reason to be dumber than Britney’s rug rats…
A recent article from The Canadian Press claims that 30% of the incoming students at Waterloo University cannot pass a basic English exam. Many exams demonstrated a misunderstanding of basic punctuation marks such as the comma or the apostrophe. Some exams even contained emoticons and netspeak such as “lol” and “cuz”. It leaves me wondering how these students passed high school English…
If one in three students are barely literate, one would figure Grammar Nazis would be in high demand. Working in overtime, on holidays and weekends. After all, people don’t want to be undereducated, unemployable and perpetually misunderstood. Or do they?
I’m just going to leave these links here for homework. Being that the subject is English, in which I’d assume you all are fully versed (you “foreigners” are excused ), this should all be review. As such, if I catch anyone repeating these mistakes, I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my language.
Haven’t you heard that opposites attract? She can’t possibly be drawn to an intellect such as yourself, but more toward an animalistic being such as myself.
I am generally impressed by the opening post. It is almost an unwritten law that, whenever one complains about grammar, one will fall catastrophically foul of its rules. The post is of a generally high standard but I would add the following two educational links to the list it contains.
I do agree entirely with the message though, for I was quite horrified to find, when I arrived in the UK, that the natives had such a poor grasp of their own language, in both written and spoken form. I wish Maestro every success with his endeavours, especially if he aims for perfect English, without any of the U.S. variations.
I qualify under the exemption made by Maestro for "foreigners", and am thereby excused any and all errors in this post.
Some interesting stuff in those links, although some of it obviously doesn’t apply to speakers of non-American English (the list of “mispronunciations” is just ridiculous though - surely people aren’t that stupid, are they? Old timer’s disease?!).
One thing that particularly caught my attention was the use of commas in a list. I was always taught not to put a comma before the “and” at the end of the list (e.g. sausage, egg and chips), but that link suggests that it should be there (sausage, egg, and chips). Have things changed since I was at school, or is this an American peculiarity, or was my teacher just wrong?
I do tend to be the annoying person who notices typos and grammar mistakes, but I think sometimes proper formal grammar can make you sound a bit silly. For example, if I was remarking on the relative unicycling skills of Kris Holm and myself, I would probably say “Kris is a better unicyclist than me,” which is of course gramatically incorrect. But “Kris is a better unicyclist than I” just sounds utterly stuck-up and pretentious IMO. I might say “…than I am,” which doesn’t sound so bad, but is probably not formally correct because of the “am” stuck on the end, but it sounds much better to me.
Spoken English and formal written English are not the same thing, and people who insist on speaking in utterly gramatically correct language all the time sound ridiculous (Brian Sewell et al).
Eek - what did I say? Have I offended the Brian Sewell fan club? I was trying to keep my remarks general, not too ranty and not directed towards anybody in particular (sorry Mr. Sewell if you should ever read this!)
Did I fail?
I simply meant that your suggstion that we’re allowed to change grammatical usage so as not to sound silly is “the thin end of the wedge”.
Cuz what duzn’t snd ciley 2 U…, and all that
That’s true.
I didn’t intend to imply that everything should be a free-for-all. It’s just that I had a very pedantic English teacher, making me probably more of a “grammar Nazi” than most (in that I tend to notice those sort of details), but certain “correct” usage still sounds wrong to me, so I’ll occasionally favour common usage over “correctness for the sake of it”, especially in speech.
), this should all be review. As such, if I catch anyone repeating these mistakes, I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my language.
