From Bad to Worse

Huh?

Irony: Uniquely American!

These cringe-worthy displays of language deficiency make me want to laugh in disbelief... and weep for the evidently sorry state of English in our country.

Naturally, the latter reaction matters more to me.

Truth or falsetto: you decide

A teacher friend of mine recently shared this bit of wisdom. After describing the religious practice of granting indulgences, one of her students wrote the following:

People have made up things in the past like this so how do we know for sure that all of this isn't a tall tail made up by some guy who at that time wants to attain power. It all could be just a falsetto.

I admit that it's sometimes hard to tell the difference ;-)

Unique Baby Names??

I can't even begin to explain how I ended up on this web page, but I found a site that suggested ways to come up with unique names for your newborn (or to be born) children.

Unique punctuation - Create a totally unique name by making unusual use of punction such as the placing of an apostrophe, a hyphen or a middle Capital Letter.

Alternative Spellings - An easy way to create unique baby names. A good example is Ryann or Delyia.

First of all, does that really say 'punction'?

And second, there should be editing rules against this sort of baby naming.

Just for kicks.

The Grammar Vandal

So, I found a blog by this woman that has apparently has made it her mission to make fun of and deride businesses that dare violate the rules of grammar, spelling, etc. It's good reading! There's interesting stuff such as a diagram of one of Obama's more complex sentences, a spelling error on an American Eagle t-shirt, a selection of quotes from a really crazy argument about grammar on Facebook, and other such smirk-worthy items. Here is one of her posts that made me chuckle:

"This is my new favorite entry on my new favorite Web site, fmylife.com:

Today, I was flirting via text with a coworker. Things started getting heated, and I wanted to send her a sexy picture. I asked if she had any suggestions. She said, “Your nuts!” She meant, 'YOU’RE nuts.'... FML."

Here, we see very clearly the relation between grammar fail and epic fail.

Hard to believe...

SOUTH BEND — If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and Indiana 23 between Thursday and Monday morning.

The ad urged people to go to the “southbendon.com” website for a look at the “15 best things about our pubic schools.” That’s right, the billboard said “pubic” instead of “public” schools. The letter “L” had been left out of the word public.

How Does I Engrish?

While looking for something to post for the week I happened to rediscover the wonders and joys of Engrish.com. The website portrays failures of English that exist in our world and have been perfectly captured and documented in there natural habitats. At the expanse of others, it serves to remind me how difficult our language, and all its nuances, can be, even things that we take for granted, such as, the proper use of commas. Its also hilarious. Grammer is hard!

Punctuation Saves Lives! (Another illustration of commas with direct addresses)

Facebook, it seems, proves to be a venerable buffet of errors in punctuation, grammar, and spelling. This morning, I came across this little gem (whose author shall remain anonymous!):

"Damn we going to eat good people!"

Ignoring the incorrect use of the present progressive in the author's verb, your eyes might be drawn to the more hilarious problem at work here—eat good people! Because of the way this sentence is written, it appears that the noun phrase good people is the direct object of the sentence's main verb, eat. A direct object is the element in a sentence that directly receives the action of a verb—it answers the question of "what?" or "whom?" In the case of this particular sentence, the direct object would answer the question of "eat what?" or "eat whom?"

That's right: eat good people. In other words, we are going to eat people who are good.

Most readers of that sentence, however, would probably safely assume that the author is not revealing his or her cannibalistic tendencies, but is rather addressing an audience, whom he or she refers to as people. The author is telling people that we going to eat good or, more correctly, that "we are going to eat well." To avoid causing certain readers to spit out their Special K cereal during their casual perusals of social networking Web sites, the author should make it clear that he or she is directly addressing an audience by inserting a comma to separate the addressee from the rest of the sentence. Thus, the sentence would read, "Damn we going to eat good, people!"

There. Now we know that people aren't going to be eaten.

Oh, and on a somewhat related but somewhat less important note, one should also insert commas to set off interjections in sentences. Words like "yes," "no," "hi," and "bye" as well as emotive expressions like "ugh," "ahem," "wow," and "gosh" are interjections. Damn, which is a markedly more intensified variation of "darn," would fall into the interjection category—it's a word that, as Wikipedia puts it, expresses an isolated emotion related to the rest of the sentence. Anyway, with commas properly in place to set off interjections and direct addresses, the sentence above would read, "Damn, we going to eat good, people!"

So, remember, folks: A comma is sometimes the only difference between an innocent call for joyful merriment and a merciless command to evoke humanity's most ignoble instincts!

"Let's eat, Grandma!" vs. "Let's eat Grandma!" Which one do you mean?

Apostrophe's: Abused Mark's of Punctuation!

Those of you who read a lot of students' papers (say, if you're a peer writing tutor or something) or who just spend a lot of time on Facebook will likely run into a piece of composition that resembles this:

I did so many thing's today! First I had egg's and waffle's for breakfast, and then I gathered my book's and thing's for school. I found out I had to read several chapter's because my teacher's will have lot's of test's for us over the next few day's. Then my friend's met me after I ran some errand's, and we went to two different party's! I only had three drink's, but I still had my parent's pick me up. I would hate to crash into all those car's on the road's!

It is staggering to see how misued—nay, abused—the apostrophe has become. More and more commonly, the apostrophe is egregiously deployed to make plural nouns when, in fact, making a noun plural typically involves nothing more than adding the letter "s" to the noun sans the apostrophe.

Turning a singular noun into a plural noun? No problem. Just add an "s."

Granted, pluralizing a noun becomes just a tad trickier when the noun is supposed to undergo a bigger change, but whether you like it or not, still no apostrophe is needed. The example above, for instance, has party's, whose correct plural form is "parties." Ugh.

Okay, now that I've addressed simple plural nouns and their incompatibility with apostrophes, let's take a look at what apostrophes are actually meant for.

The first use of an apostrophe is to mark a noun—whether singular or plural—as possessive. Here are some examples:

When the noun is singular, the apostrophe is followed by an "s," as in
The cat's bowl or
Bruce's car or
The school's headmaster.

When the noun is already plural, the apostrophe follows the "s," as in
The books' covers or
His dogs' leashes.

The second use of an apostrophe is to indicate omitted letters in contractions. Here are some examples:

Don't = Do not
Won't = Will not
Shouldn't = Should not
It's = It is
They're = They are

On a related note, occasionally apostrophes are used to omit letters in informal writings, such as when the writer is attempting to reflect the idiosyncrasies of slang or a regional dialect, as in
I'll be gettin' there soon! or
He's just killin' time and chillin'.

And that's it: the two main uses of the apostrophe in the English language. Unless you're using the apostrophe for one of these two purposes, please leave the poor thing alone.

Bathroom Graffiti Grammar Refresher

No "call xxx-xxxx for a good time" or "Waimanalo PRIDE" scribbles on this bathroom door in Moore Hall. Instead, here we find a handy reminder that seems to have been born out of some student's grammatical frustration. Ah, college is an interesting place, isn't it? :]

10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling

There are some words that are commonly misspelled that can feel like nails on a chalkboard to an editor. Now, when you see your friends use them, you can just point them to this cartoon image.


My favorite part has to be the explanation for the proper spelling of 'a lot'.

You don't write alittle, abunch, acanteloupe, aporkchop.

So, don't write alot.

Why writing skills are so important

If one wishes to engage aggressively and cogently in debates surrounding important issues, especially in writing, one should at least be able to express oneself correctly, lest he or she be taken for a "moran."