The first one I was sure she was responsible for, because she was lying across the keyboard when I came back inside, but since then I’ve had a string of weird posts, and some friends received some weird emails, and there was a strange post to Facebook that were clearly a mishmash of things from my clipboard, and occasionally a quote from the MB or wherever the post was.
I did a little experimenting, and it really seemed to be happening with just the one laptop-- it would happen if I’d do something and leave it opened-- so I reinstalled the OS. I might just have to stop using it until I can take it in; problem is, all my religious school stuff is on it. It’s a lot of stuff to transfer over. It’s also easier to use (usually) than my others-- but it’s the one with the intermittent loss of touchscreen.
I would have said, “Irregardlessly, I coulda cared less about whom what like makes your head literally esplode.” But that’s just me.
I was raised by two English major journalists who daily drilled proper grammar and spelling into my siblings and me. I don’t thank them. American English as it is written nowadays is pure torture to read. I try hard not to comment, but every error jumps out like a stab in the eye.
I’ve given up on:
It’s v. its
Loose v. lose
Literally
All right v. alright
Irregardless
Healthful v. healthy (Really? Is your food healthy?)
Things I miss:
To be. Honestly, is it so much more trouble to say, “It needs TO BE fixed”? Gawd.
An. “I’ll be there in a hour,” makes me want to rip my ears off.
Reign, rein, rain. Forget it, Jake. It’s Illiterate Town.
A new favorite: “I stepped foot over the line.” No, you idiot. You SET foot over the line.
Which brings me to: You did not TOW the line. You TOED the line.
Honestly, I could do dozens of these. I see them all. I wish I didn’t. They make me weep inside. Silently, for the most part. No one loves a grammar Nazi.
Good Lord, I wish whom and whomever would vanish from English usage because I see and hear those two words far too often used as subject pronouns.
Incorrect: Give the award to whomever guesses the correct number of beans in the jar.
Correct: Give the award to whoever guesses the correct number of beans in the jar.
Incorrect: Whom is leading the polls now?
Correct: Who is leading the polls now?
The worst example of incorrect pronoun usage I’ve ever heard, though, is from a comedian (Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy, or Ron White–certainly not Larry the Cable Guy because I cannot stand listening to his stupidity). The comedian in question said “My wife and I’s”. I have no idea what followed because that’s the only time in my life I’ve heard the possessive pronoun “I’s” and was so stunned that someone whose job is dependent on his ability to communicate said such a thing that I missed the rest of the sentence.
I just did a web search for “my wife and I’s” and am now more disappointed in our species. My hope was to discover which comedian I heard make that utterance. Do the search yourself if you do not have enough despair in your life.
This type of joint possession is actually an interesting grammatical question. I personally see no problem with “[my wife and I]'s” logically, though I understand that will ring wrong to many speakers of English. I would say “me and my wife’s,” and nobody in my dialect would blink an eye except for the language mavens, but that’s an inelegant solution as well. How would you construct it without completely restructuring the sentence (which I usually find to be a cheat, because sometimes we want to say things in a certain order, and with a certain emphasis.) Language log take on it.
I hear/read it everywhere now, I’m sorry to say. Even one of the grammar taskmasters (dear old Dad) of my distant childhood and engineer of my grammagony, said it once. I nearly slapped him.
Agreed, but my advice (note: my advice, not “my advise”) is do not bring up the “literally” thing on this board. I have, and it’s not pretty. All the Creative Writing types – or whatever the fuck they think they are – come out and claim that “literally” has been abused for hundreds of years by all the best writers to apparently mean its exact opposite. No, it has not, but you will nevertheless be ganged up on, ridiculed, and scorned.
What good writers have done is occasionally used “literally” in a non-standard way as a creative form of appropriately expressive, closely related hyperbole, not as an ignorant self-contradiction:
F. Scott Fitzgerald: “He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room”.
James Joyce: “The caretaker’s daughter was literally run off her feet”.
Illiterate ignoramus: “I was like, so surprised that, like, my head literally asploded”.
As for “healthful” vs. “healthy” food, I think this is a long-lost cause. For better or worse, it’s so deeply ingrained that it has indeed become part of the language whether we like it nor not.
Oh yeah? How about when you’re out in a powerboat and the engine quits, and another boat comes along to help, and you throw them a line. What does the other boat do with that line, huh, smarty-pants?
I do. We need more literacy, especially out here in the wilds of the internet. Please keep doing what you’re doing and don’t give up.
I was wondering that myself, because I first came across that construction about 20-25 years ago. And it really jarred on my ears. Like crazily so. But … well … now I kinda like it. I like local color. I didn’t realize it had become so much more widespread, but, hey, color is what makes language fun to me (as an English major; as someone who also was a copy editor professionally for a spell.) I hate this bitching about language and value judgments about constructions that stray from the norm from the “prestige dialect.” Yes, there is a time and place for this, but color in language is what I love. Like how it’s used in “Treme” or in the “Trainspotting” novel (or movie, but much more apparently in the written word.) This is what makes language beautiful. Sure, not in formal situations, but otherwise, give me color.
Indeed. You see people defending horrible misusages like “The Sun is literally the biggest object in the solar system.” Unless you’re using ‘literally’ to refer to words or letters, you’re doing it wrong.
I have a set rule that is easy to remember: if you would use “they”, that is where “who” belongs; if you would use “them”, then “whom” would work there. There is no such valid construction as “them’s” (well, maybe “I gave condolences to them’s what got kilt”)
Although most of the things in this thread drive me batty, that one does not. I have sympathy for making an idiomatic error that nevertheless still makes literal sense. “Hone” makes perfect sense to describe a process of refinement, getting closer to some desired outcome whether literal or metaphorical. I have much less sympathy for using words that don’t mean anything resembling what was meant (of/have, could/couldn’t, loose/lose, etc.).
That’s a good system. I used a similar one to get “its” straight when I was younger - since “itself” doesn’t have an apostrophe, the possessive for ‘it’ doesn’t either.
Here’s a pet peeve of mine - apostrophes for plural acronyms. The Navy has lots of SSNs - if you write “SSN’s” I’m expecting a noun after that, like “the SSN’s captain.” Same for ATVs, ATMs, etc.
