# I am not a grammar nazi but come on now!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [June 10, 2016, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012 "2016-06-10T11:14:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/1 "2016-06-10T11:14:02Z")
From [a story in the New York Daily News](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn-judge-refuses-overturn-grid-kid-slayer-conviction-article-1.2667789)
> [@](#):
>
> “For the record, this court finds that Avitto’s testimony at the hearing to be absolutely incredible,” Chun wrote.
>
> “In fact, it was so patently incredible it bordered to be laughable and embarrassing,” the judge wrote.
>
> Giuca’s murder conviction was denied to get overturned by the Brooklyn DA’s Conviction Review Unit in January 2015.
WTF? Both the judge and reporter seem scarcely able to string a coherent sentence together. In the immortal words of Tony Soprano, this shit is unacceptable!
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### Author:  [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/2 "2016-06-10T11:55:40Z")
Certainly any judicial written judgement should be thoroughly checked.
P.S. I think it’s grammar **N** azi. 😉
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/3 "2016-06-10T12:12:06Z")
I would wish to ventriculate my acumen that both of them the judge’s and reporter’s grammars be so much not so good that it literally bordered to be tootering on the laughable cliff brink of illiteracy nearly.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/4 "2016-06-10T12:42:53Z")
Each of the first two examples in OP was written by someone whose grammar is excellent, but who went back and edited a sentence without then rereading it to see if proper grammar was still intact. I do this myself sometimes, though usually catching the error on proofread.
Thus, these are not examples of grammatical ignorance, but rather symptoms of haste or overconfidence in present-day computer-based text typing.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/5 "2016-06-10T12:58:23Z")
It’s plausible in the case of the judge’s statement, though far from certain. Quite a bit less so in the second example. I don’t know how you would know this for sure, though certainly editing mistakes like that happen a lot and I’ve done it myself. I have also found inexcusably bad grammar and bad writing in general on major sites like [cnn.com](http://cnn.com) that doesn’t come from editing mistakes.
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### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/6 "2016-06-10T13:04:26Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> Each of the first two examples in OP was written by someone whose grammar is excellent, but who went back and edited a sentence without then rereading it to see if proper grammar was still intact. I do this myself sometimes, though usually catching the error on proofread.
>
> Thus, these are not examples of grammatical ignorance, but rather\*\*\* symptoms of haste\*\*\* or overconfidence in present-day computer-based text typing.
Or, maybe there was an administrator who specified that the judge had only five minutes to correct his mistakes.
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### Author:  [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/7 "2016-06-10T13:07:07Z")
The last sentence is bad enough that I’d be hesitant to trust the accuracy of the quotes before it.
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### Author:  [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/8 "2016-06-10T13:21:48Z")
> [@Asimovian](#):
>
> The last sentence is bad enough that I’d be hesitant to trust the accuracy of the quotes before it.
That was my thought. The reporter probably got the Judge’s quotes wrong.
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### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/9 "2016-06-10T14:33:14Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> I would wish to ventriculate my acumen that both of them the judge’s and reporter’s grammars be so much not so good that it literally bordered to be tootering on the laughable cliff brink of illiteracy nearly.
Hey… knock a self a pro, Slick! That gray matter backlot perform us DOWN, I take TCB-in’, man! [😕]
(Eloquent, **wolfpup** , truly eloquent)
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### Author:  [@quiltguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quiltguy)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/10 "2016-06-10T15:01:51Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> I would wish to ventriculate my acumen that both of them the judge’s and reporter’s grammars be so much not so good that it literally bordered to be tootering on the laughable cliff brink of illiteracy nearly.
Thank you, Mrs. Palin. 😉
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### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/11 "2016-06-10T15:04:45Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> Each of the first two examples in OP was written by someone whose grammar is excellent, but who went back and edited a sentence without then rereading it to see if proper grammar was still intact. I do this myself sometimes, though usually catching the error on proofread.
I have no doubt this is what happened, but…
[QUOTE=the article]
…said Justice Chun in court as he read snippets of his 22-page decision…
[/QUOTE]
It’s curious that the first two errors are in direct quotes that originate from the transcription of an oral statement by the judge. It’s not credible that the judge made such jarring errors in speech. Perhaps an editor went through to edit the article for style, realized that they were editing direct quotes, then messed things up in trying to change them back.
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### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2016, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-not-a-grammar-nazi-but-come-on-now/757012/12 "2016-06-10T15:15:52Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> I would wish to ventriculate my acumen that both of them the judge’s and reporter’s grammars be so much not so good that it **literally** bordered to be tootering on the laughable cliff brink of illiteracy nearly.
You couldn’t resist, could you! 😃
This is timely - apropos of our other conversation, any (descriptivist) linguist would agree that these are examples of objective errors rather than just poor style. They violate empirical rules of sentence construction, they are not grammatical in any dialect of English, formal or informal. And I have no doubt that the judge, the reporter and the editor would all agree that these are literally just mistakes. Anything does not go.