YES. YES. YES. YES.

[snowgrouse]

Mitchell and Webb--Grammar

Further proof that I am, in fact, David Mitchell. Except I just go around in a ginger wig, pretending to be a woman.

Comments

[capriuni]

Well, if I were to pick a nit, I'd say that most of that skit was about pronunciation, not grammar, and while laziness in either is equally annoying, they are, in fact, different sins.

However, that Who/Whom thing really gets up my nose. I don't mind it so much in sitcom dialog, when that mistake fits the character. But I find myself talking back to the TV when it's written into the script for announcers in adverts, news anchors, and other "voices of authority."

[snowgrouse]

The ignoramus thing was grammar, and half the stuff was bad spelling in dialogue form rather than pronunciation (it'd probably be more difficult to make jokes about bad spelling without dialogue). And to be fair, the sketch didn't have a title at all in the show itself, so it might as well have been called Mr. Homicidal Language Purist. *gets out gun with silencer*

[vilakins]

I yell at the TV screen when people misuse "literally" and say things like "Me and John are going to town" and "He bought Mary and I a cup of coffee", and have to try to be polite when people so it in real life. "Text" as a past-tense verb also drives me crazy. Paint-ball time!

But I have to say that I find the online fashion for deliberate misspelling equally painful, sorry.

[snowgrouse]

I get most embarrassed when people are trying to defend a legitimate cause and then end up having grammar fail. Like "ableism", when it should be "ablism". And Finnish has had this *awful* trend in the recent years where people use "racism" instead of "discrimination", so you get people using terms like "age racism" or even "gender racism" because they are just that thick. FFS.

[capriuni]

I tried to use "Ablism" instead of "Ableism," when I first came across the word, because you're right -- that's how it should be spelled. But when I put "Ablism" into Google, to make sure I understood exactly what it meant, Google asked if I meant "Ableism".

And then, I discovered that the official spelling in Miriam-Webster's Dictionary (at least the online version -- I don't have a hard copy) includes the 'e' ... At that point, I figuratively threw up my hands, and joined the crowd.

WTF. I don't know why the e is there. It makes no sense. But it is there.

[vilakins]

Word choices like ageing/aging, ablism/ableism/ likeable/likable are so difficult in English because there doesn't seem to be a rule and both might look OK or not OK. "Ableism" is understandable because it's following the pattern of some other words. I bet Finnish is like German and Italian and it's easy to spell a word you've only heard.

Using "racism" that way is truly awful and it will lose them the word itself, so they'll have to say "race racism". The useful word "factoid", only just created last century to mean a plausible but incorrect piece of information now means a trivial fact, and don't get me started on "literal". Enough people misuse a word and that word changes. There are heaps of words in English which have completely changed their meanings, even in the last 200 years. I suppose "literally" will mean "almost" one day soon.