That occured to me, too. (Avoiding prepositional endings does make one sound like Yoda, does it not?)
Amarinth and blinkingblinkingblinking, I agree with you totally about the reflexive pronoun issue.
And yes, “Between you and I, who should I ask?” was meant as a joke, but it was poorly placed in my list of potential topics. :smack:
Is anyone else driven crazy by people whose voicemail greetings say, “I’ll call you back at my earliest convenience,” when I’m pretty sure they mean the opposite?
The one that bugs me is people failing to use ‘only’ in the right place as in –
“I only have five dollars.”
It’s not grammar, but “often” pronounced as “off” “ten” and “across” pronounced as “acrosst” drive me nuts. I’ll give another vote for “lose” vs “loose”.
Keep it simple. You will be amazed at how poor most people’s grasp of English is. When I see a grammar or spelling mistake my first reactions is “they’re even dumber than me”.
I think the subject of adverbs needs to be addressed, too. Too often I hear:
“He’s driving too slow.”
It’s supposed to be:
“He’s driving too slowly.”
And let’s cover the differences between good and well while we’re at it:
“He is a good video game player”
“He plays video games well.”
NOT “He plays video games good.” Anyone who says this around me deserves a punch in the teeth.
If this is a quick overview on how to write a grammatical letter or memo, and not total remedial grammar course – hit on verb/number agreement. (Singular subjects get “is,” plural subjects get “are.”) That’s probably the thing I correct most in the prose of people who are supposed to know how to write.
I have thought this for years. But as I see and hear it now, the usuage “He played good” seems to be standard. Only a few small percentage say “he played well”, or “He drives slowly”.
The one I really hate is “How are you?” and answer “I am good”. No. You may be good or not, but what you are trying to say is “I am well”. But I hear about 99% of people say “I am good” in that situation.
I fall for this occasionally, because “I am well” sounds so stuffy. But most of the time I avoid the whole thing by saying “Fine”.
I will always say “This is she”, “It was he”, etc., however, no matter how stuffy it sounds.
Can I send my secretary to this luncheon? Please?