Posts tagged “grammar”
#FridayFive: Favorite Adverbs
View the Friday Five from July 23rd, 2010
Daily David
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I can’t stand when people say, “I could care less.”
“I could care less,” is one of those little things that drives me absolutely batshit crazy. If you could care less, it means you care. That’s not what you mean when you say that, is it? What you mean is that you don’t care. Someone posted this handy little graphic in a discussion forum and it really helps. (Click it to see!) Do you get it now?
Whether or Not
The words or not never follow the word whether. That’s it. That’s the rule. Whether implies or not. You don’t ever need to say both of them. The words or not should never be spoken. (They should certainly never be written.) Whether implies “or not”. Get it?
To the political analyst who discussed Obama‘s campaign this morning on NPR: I’m sorry to say that you lost any credibility you had the moment you said that something was furmaliar. Nothing is furmaliar. Lots and lots of things are familiar. There is no r in the middle of that word. It’s not an accent. It’s not “the way we say it here”. It’s not anything other than wrong. You disagree. I know you do. So, Mr. Political Analyst, imagine this: If you and I were engaged in a conversation about Obama and I pronounced his name Orbama, would you correct me? I think you would. If I said, “Oh, that’s just the way I say it,” what would you think? Good day, sir. I said, “Good day!”
Chinese Instructions, Part 2
I got a new insulated coffee mug a few days ago. There was a little slip of paper inside it with “instructions”. This is a coffee mug. It’s very nice and this morning it did an excellent job of keeping my coffee hot while I drove to the office. Here’s a bit of the writing
Grammar Matters (Still)
Recently I saw a commercial for Sylvan Learning Centers. This is a company that is selling products to help your children do well in school. The ad showed a teenage girl gabbing on the telephone. The voice-over said, “Sally sure can talk fast. We can help her read fast,” or something like that. Apparently grammar
Grammar Matters (Again)
Punctuation matters.
The “plural apostrophe” (e.g. no dog’s allowed, sofa’s for sale, UGH) is running rampant these days, and it’s not just my imagination. It’s so wrong that I can’t even begin to fathom how anyone could make such a mistake. I hate it when people dismiss it with, “Oh, not everyone’s a grammar freak.”
Grammar? You think it’s an issue of grammar? I hate to break it to you, but if you can’t spell “dogs,” you’re illiterate.
via strange brew
Impact the Itch
Someone commented on my mini-rant that the words “itch” and “impact” are not verbs. The reader seemed to suggest that the appearance of these words in “a dictionary” as verbs is a viable argument for them being accepted that way. My reply: There are many words in “the dictionary” that are not words. You cannot