Oh Good God
Yes, I just blasphemed on ash Wednesday.
But hey, my status message earlier today was:
"i gave up jesus for lent. anyone want him? he's up for grabs!!" -nooners
So take everything in perspective.
I write to you today to complain about politics. I'm not here to berate the candidates for their views or positioning. I'm not even here to discuss relative merits of one over another.
No I'm here today to discuss grammar.
As you all are well aware I am nowhere near the perfect grammarian but in all honesty I do my best. I use the appropriate there/their, or to/too and I try to encourage people to think about word order and placement when at all possible.
Apparently that's too much to ask from those people currently running for president.
I was just in the midst of a New York Times article that said:
"The new verbal tic is part trend and part defensive posture. Since the Me Generation, "I" and "me" have become increasingly tangled up as Americans have looked for ways around tricky constructions. As sportswriter Red Smith once put it, "Myself is the foxhole of ignorance, where cowards take refuge, because they were taught that me is vulgar and I is egotistical." In the same spirit, "myself" has become the campaign's de rigueur grammar cop-out, substituted for I or me when the candidate isn't sure which is accurate -- or worse, assumes Americans will see proper English as elitist."
Taken from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120027151295487327.html
Okay, I get it, I and me have connotations so you want to be as inoffensive as possible....but Americans will see proper English as elitest? That makes me want to either throw up or throw a chair at the Board of Education. Have we, as a society, degraded to such a point as to where we think people speaking proper English are elitest and somehow trying to look down on others? Has anyone out there seen evidence of this?
Please! Say it ain't so!
But hey, my status message earlier today was:
"i gave up jesus for lent. anyone want him? he's up for grabs!!" -nooners
So take everything in perspective.
I write to you today to complain about politics. I'm not here to berate the candidates for their views or positioning. I'm not even here to discuss relative merits of one over another.
No I'm here today to discuss grammar.
As you all are well aware I am nowhere near the perfect grammarian but in all honesty I do my best. I use the appropriate there/their, or to/too and I try to encourage people to think about word order and placement when at all possible.
Apparently that's too much to ask from those people currently running for president.
I was just in the midst of a New York Times article that said:
"The new verbal tic is part trend and part defensive posture. Since the Me Generation, "I" and "me" have become increasingly tangled up as Americans have looked for ways around tricky constructions. As sportswriter Red Smith once put it, "Myself is the foxhole of ignorance, where cowards take refuge, because they were taught that me is vulgar and I is egotistical." In the same spirit, "myself" has become the campaign's de rigueur grammar cop-out, substituted for I or me when the candidate isn't sure which is accurate -- or worse, assumes Americans will see proper English as elitist."
Taken from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120027151295487327.html
Okay, I get it, I and me have connotations so you want to be as inoffensive as possible....but Americans will see proper English as elitest? That makes me want to either throw up or throw a chair at the Board of Education. Have we, as a society, degraded to such a point as to where we think people speaking proper English are elitest and somehow trying to look down on others? Has anyone out there seen evidence of this?
Please! Say it ain't so!