Good grief. Got a snailmail packet from Ted Kennedy today

[karlrschneider]

(just got around to opening the mail)...and it has a window decal saying

HAD ENOUGH
Vote Democrat in '06


They couldn't spare the $.0000001 to add "ic"?

:eyes:

[patrice]

1. In a world of mis-placed modifiers, improper pronoun case,

subject verb disagreement, and nothing but sentence fragments . . . .

The distinction between the adverb form and the noun form is lost on most people.

[karlrschneider]

2. To wantonly split infinitives with sentence fragments

with which I don't put.

Now I feel more like I do now than I did before.


;-)

[patrice]

3. I'm not exactly innocent myself.

I've noticed how there seem to be an awful lot of new collective nouns that get singular verbs anymore, e.g. Information systems is a challenging career field.

I'm a technical writer, so, though I don't exactly butcher our language, I'm killing off the articles frequently and engaging in a lot of neo-logizing (ewwww that was a particularly ugly one!).

Pronoun case is one of my pet peeves. Spoken Media gets it wrong most of the time. Some people are trying, but they still get it mixed up, making it subjective "He gave the tickets to my wife and I." when it should be objective and objective when it should be subjective "Tom and me went to lunch." or "This is her." There will be almost nothing but objecive pronoun case in 10 or so years. I should give up and stop letting it bother me.

I want to say to these people, "Would you say 'He gave the tickets to I'? Would you say 'Me went to lunch'? or 'Her is this'?" but they'd think I am neurotic.

[karlrschneider]

4. I hear that one often. Even educated friends will say something like

"Remember when me and you went to Jamaica and...?"

It seems to have almost gained legitimacy in the lexicon. Maybe I'm just too anal - I know
language evolves but I'm a curmudgeon and it doesn't please me much. Or at all. ;-)


Why can't we adopt some generic pronoun to replace "his/her" or the goofy and wrong "their"? - to
fix the cumbersome usage we seem to be stuck with, e.g. "Nobody wants his (his/her?) (their?)
kids to be drug addicts."

There's been, as I'm sure you know, a flaccid attempt to get "hir" into the lexicon but it hasn't
gotten much traction.

See how nuts the world has made me when I obsess over -this-?
AAARGGGHHH


edit: We're probably both neurotic. Maybe that ain't a bad thing after all. ;-)

[patrice]

9. They could/would say "Remember when you went to Jamaica?"

But they wouldn't say "Remember when me went to Jamaica?"

If they'd remember this simple test, they could get it right, that is, *if* the schools are even teaching this anymore.

[Stardust]

7. I feel pretentious saying "This is she" or "That would be I" even though

I know it's correct. It also doesn't flow naturally. I have to slow down and ponder which pronoun to use, then I almost stutter when I know it sounds pompous. But it's still shocking (and disappointing) when I hear *very* well-educated people misspeak the pronouns. I want them to do better somehow. It's a lost cause, I'm afraid.

[patrice]

8. I know what you mean about being uncomfortable with correct

pronoun case. I have been, not so much lately really, but certainly in the past, I have been accused of thinking I'm better, because of the words I use, so I just accept negative responses to the correct pronoun.

It's not about being "better". There are rational reasons to resist incorrect grammar, reasons that have to do with how well a language accomplishes its purpose, i.e. accurate communication.

The cumulative effect of breaking grammar rules is CONFUSION. Especially in Business, but Everywhere really, Confusion costs lots of money!

[ginnyinWI]

5. well, grammar aside...

I thought this was a ploy by the right--to say "Democrat" when they should say "Democratic", as a way to demean our party. So now we're going to do it to ourselves? Would "vote Democratic" not be clear enough (would it mean "just vote in a democratic election"?) I don't know.

I got the same sticker weeks ago. I had it in my car window for a while, but the bad usage bugged me so much that I took it off.

[Cleita]

6. You are right and we shouldn't adopt their language.

We already have allowed them to define too much whom we are. By using bad English and grammar they put us on the defensive all the time.