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?
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”.
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.