National Grammar Day 2011

Do you wince when someone uses poor grammar, whether writing or speaking? Does it make you cringe when someone writes "it's" (a contraction of the two words "it is") when they mean or are referring to "its" (the possessive form)? Does it pain you to hear someone say "I should of taken the train" instead of "I should have take taken the train"? Do your eyes narrow in displeasure when you see a sign that reads: "Patrons must wipe there (or they're) feet before entering" instead of "Patrons must wipe their feet before entering"?

Then National Grammar Day is a day made for you, my friend.

Grammar, simply put, is the system of a language. Many like to think of it as the "rules" of a language.

I was fortunate to have teachers who were strong when it came to English Grammar during my elementary and junior high school years. They provided a solid foundation of the rules and system of correctly writing and speaking. I did not particularly care for diagramming sentences or identifying split infinitives, but learning grammar was not as difficult as math for me. I suspect it is one of those "right brain/left brain" issues. In any case, English Grammar came easier to me than other learning subjects. Though some have referred to me at times as a "Grammar Nazi", the truth is that I am constantly learning and re-learning English Grammar.

And I hope you will too.

Happy National Grammar Day! Treat our language well.

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More News Release Gaffes

I am still amazed every morning at the spelling and grammatical errors I read in news releases that cross my desk, supposedly written by professional journalists. Is this more evidence of the "dumbing down" of America? Is this the quality of graduates that journalism schools are producing? Did spell check break? Was the copy editor napping?

Or am I just too damn picky?

Everyone makes mistakes, I understand that. I do too, all the time. That is why you have proofreaders for manuscripts and books and copy editors for magazines and newspapers and Denise for this blog. And it's why you do those things BEFORE you publish the piece.

Before I met and married the love of my life I used to date a copy editor for a (formerly) great metropolitan newspaper. I would routinely, sometimes daily, dissect the incorrect phrasing of an article or point out the spelling and/or grammatical errors of articles in the paper (that were not in the sections she edited) and she always wondered aloud why I didn't get a job doing what she did.

Anyway, here are the gaffes that came across my desk yesterday morning, along with my snarky remarks.

"...hadn't been in her basement for two weeks, and low and behold she had water in it." Well, now this one makes sense because the basement is "low" in the house, right? However the correct phrase is "lo and behold" which is still rather conversational for a news piece. By the way, "lo and behold", means "look and behold" not "get down and behold", lol.

"What it did, it shook the house and jared the sheet-rock and made it crack." Is that Jared, the Subway Sandwich guy? Is he now "Jared the Sheetrock"? More likely is that the writer meant to write "jarred the sheetrock" though simply stating that it cracked the sheetrock would have been sufficient, given the context. Oh, and yes, "sheetrock" is one word, not hyphenated.

"...determined that it needed to be demobilize and..." Let's just forget about those silly grammar rules that say verb tenses should agree. In other words, if you use a past tense verb in one part of the sentence, any other verbs must be past tense as well. Otherwise you sound like...well, we'll leave that part out of this.

Interestingly, I just received the November 2009 issue of The Writers Network News (a free monthly newsletter available from Zebra Communications) and it has this little piece on proofreading:

Why the world needs editors and proofreaders

Many, many years ago when I had my first newspaper job I had to both write and proofread my articles. I covered a local wedding and wrote "...the bride was draped in Chantilly lace, except I didn't catch myself, and the story ran "the bride was raped in chantilly lace..." and THAT's how you really LEARN. Alvin Guthertz

The Writers Network News is an excellent resource for writers. Go check it out!

I think my desire to read proper English (especially if it is written by professional journalists and writers) is perfectly natural, but Laura Miller has an article up on Salon that says I'm stuck up and should just get over it.

What do you think?

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50 Useful Blogs for Writers

Over on The Word Blog, Randy Ray has compiled a list of 50 Useful Blogs for Writers. He's broken them down into 21 blogs of Writing Tips, 10 Word of the Day blogs, and 19 Grammar blogs.

Plus, if you read down into the comments, there are links to some other blogs for writers that might be of interest.

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Grammar Gaffe

It's a sad situation when AP posts something like this;

"The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's given too someone ..."

They have since corrected it, but it hit me like a slap in the face this morning when I was reading their news releases that were coming across my desk.

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In The Light Of Day - Grammar Correction

This is a lesson. A lesson to me. A lesson about writing a post (or anything) late at night and submitting it with only a cursory eye toward editing.

In spite of knowing better than to do the above AND in spite of being fairly aware of and conversant with the standard rules of grammar (thought I do not claim to be an expert or master of them), I wrote the following in yesterday's post - Barnes & Noble; Pulling In The Welcome Mat?:

Even the straight back wooden chairs were few and far between and each of them were occupied.

"...each of them were occupied."

God, how it hurt my eyes and my sensibilities to read that line this afternoon in the light of day.

I ignored and overlooked a simple rule; a singular noun requires a singular verb. With the singular noun "each", the plural verb "were" is woefully incorrect. If you removed the words "of them" you can easily see that the resulting phrase, "each were occupied", violates a proper rule of correct grammar and the basics of what obviously sounds right when spoken. I, in writing late at night and in a hurry, fell victim to the mistake of paying more attention to the words "of them" and using the plural verb "were" instead of focusing on the real noun "each" so that my verb would be the singular "was."

If you look at the post now you will see that I have made the correction. You may notice that instead of just correcting "were" to "was" ("...each of them was occupied") that I went a step further. Simply correcting the verb would have rendered the sentence grammatically correct, but removing "of them" completely makes for a better sounding sentence; one that is more pleasing to the eye and sensibilities.

In addition, part of my error, I believe, was mentally referring back to the plural noun/verb found earlier in the same sentence. It may have been better to write them as two separate sentences:

"Even the straight back wooden chairs were few and far between. And each of them was occupied."

But I liked the flow of the sentence as it was originally written, so I only changed the last part of it.

I read spelling and grammatical mistakes on blogs and webpages every day, usually many times a day. What makes me cringe even more when reading them is to see that the people penning the errors have identified themselves as journalists or writers; people you would expect to know better. I very seldom see an acknowledgment or apology for the mistake. This is mine.

Mea culpa.

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