Aaargh. . "Your" vs You're" on Today. .

[annabanana]

Dumb dumb dumb.. Apparently even on the NBC Network.. no one knows the difference..
(did anyone get a screen shot?)

[ixion]

1. and these people call themselves "professional" journalists and editors

Yeah. Right. Whatever.

[maddiejoan]

2. If they keep that up--

--they will loose ratings.

[panader0]

3. Yeah, there really dumb

[asjr]

4. They obviously went

to school in China. I opened a package of summer sausage the other day and the opening said "Peal here." I looked everywhere for a bell to ring and couldn't find one.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

5. Burning grammar issues we should have learned in elementary school.

Anything but the NIE and torture.


:eyes:

MKJ

[rAVES]

6. yea I totally hate that..

[anniebelle]

7. I've got a collection of these I send to MSNBC every week.

Dan Abrams has a spot on his nightly show (right after Keith) in which he highlights screw ups by the media, called Beat the Press. He'll take your spots if you give him the show and what time it was on. He gets some great ones. I've noticed in the last few years that Americans must not be taught grammar, spelling, etc. in our school system. Oh, I mean English (Lou Dobbs), not a foreign language.

[immoderate]

8. I see my pet peeve -- "alot."

There is no such word, but I see it a lot.

--IMM

[JuniperLea]

17. I see it a lot too... and "anyways"...

and noone (no one).

And on TV news, no one knows how to pronounce words properly.

Get a clue, talking heads, the "t" in "often" is silent! And there are two L's in "regularly"!

Now, some will come back and tell me that the exclamation point in the sentence above should have gone before the closing quote. This one always sticks in my craw... I was taught grammar in a very British, very Olde English fashion. It's still acceptable in GB to put the closing punctuation outside the closing quotation mark if the quotation marks are setting words apart, and not part of actual speech. There are those who would argue the closing punctuation should always go outside the closing quotation mark. And that a comma should always precede the word "and".

I keep The Gregg Reference Manual at my desk for all of these sticky wickets!

[ThomWV]

9. For those not clear on the distinction ....

You're is a contraction. When you start to use it simply say "You are" instead of "You're" and see if it works. Here's an example of a place where it doesn't work:

You might say to someone "Is that you're hammer?" but it would be wrong. Substitute and say it to yourself; "Is that you are hammer?" doesn't make much sense, does it? By contrast if you said "You're going to hit your thumb with that hammer." not only would it be a nice thing to say to someone who was about to hurt them self and its perfectly correct too. Once again, just substitute; "You are going to hit your thumb with that hammer" works just fine grammatically. See?

[Bitwit1234]

10. What happened to our school system

I just can not understand what they teach in schools today.

[Xipe Totec]

11. There grammar is atrocious

:evilgrin:

[JuniperLea]

15. Your bad....

:evilgrin:

[CrispyQ]

12. Another one:

People have been ingrained to use 'I' instead of 'me' when a sentence has two nouns. Even when 'me' is the correct word to use, people will still use 'I.' The key is to always take the other person out of the sentence to determine if you would use 'me' or 'I.'

Jane & I are going to the store. --correct

Is there cake for Jane & I? --incorrect -- If you take Jane out of the sentence, you would ask, "Is there cake for me?" not "Is there cake for I?"


I read an interesting article several years ago about how our low standards in language skills is adversely affecting our innovation.
A person's ideas are limited when they lack the words to express ideas.

[Igel]

13. Decades back H.L. Mencken wrote a book called

"The American Language". It dispels the idea that the "between you and I" deviation from standard American English is a recent thing. It's actually quite consistent, and belongs to a different dialect (or maybe a different register) of American English from the standard language usually assumed to bear prestige in the US media.

It's sort of an important point, because a lot of people assume that it's hypercorrection or a recent innovation, or random. A bit was theory-driven, since accounting for "between you and I" in a Chomskian framework was, well, pretty much impossible; maybe it's possible now that we've dismissed as imbecilic the frameworks from the '60s and '70s and '80s, and now have the fourth or fifth variety of the One True Framework.

In any event, Mencken's work almost certainly needs to be updated (or, as the mixed dialect I seem to have would have it, "Mencken's work needs updated"), but it's not still not bad for being 80 years old.

BTW, it's tough to be grammar police when you don't obey the law: " ... about how our low standards in language skills is adversely affecting our innovation." While last bit would be more felicitious with, "ability to innovate", let's stick to the obvious: "Our low standards is affecting our innovation"? They is?

[JuniperLea]

14. Without fail, I see grammatical errors on a daily basis...

In print news, television news, and in published books.

As much as I hate to see the grammar and spelling police condescending and lording over others here on DU, I hate with an even more fiery passion the errors I see in what is supposed to be professional writing.

It all goes back to education, and the lack thereof, here in the good ol' USA. We can't even produce good spellers, how in the hell are we supposed to produce good scientists and leaders?

[opihimoimoi]

16. Leave no idiot behind much?? Them Master GOPers want a dumb and dumber Nation

They thrive while we strive...

To Fool is to RULE.....

Its easier to Fool if we DROOL.....

[JuniperLea]

18. Yep... we are heading toward (not towards)

An "Idiocracy".

[opihimoimoi]

25. Heading, Toward, Pointing, etc ??? WE ARE HERE ALREADY..Idiocracy is REAL

Take a test:

Ask anyone: What is 7 x 9 ???? SEVEN Multiplied by NINE....and then come back...

In General, you should find about 40% will give you an accurate answer...

If WE cannot Compute...? Then what are we?...

Collectively, our Dolt Level is too fucking HIGH....

Spelling is One thing, Grammer is Another....but MATH???

Oh My God??? What Have we ALLOWED???

[JuniperLea]

29. What Have we ALLOWED???

In a nutshell? Self-regulation... across the board in our lives. No oversight anywhere.

My grandfather was an eighth grade graduate, and I swear he knew more on every subject than the college grads I have been interviewing lately. You should see the snide look when I ask someone with a degree in English or writing to take my writing test. Incredulous! The misplaced self-righteous disdain is its own irony. I generally go over every mistake with them, so they know why they weren't hired.

[opihimoimoi]

30. Yup, Duffussness has gone Ebolaesque...them Pubs made it airborne

[Feron]

19. For some reason, I've also noticed that a lot more people..

are using "'s" to pluralize words.



Along of course with 'lose' and 'loose'. How the hell do people get those two mixed up?

[qanda]

20. I see lose and loose mixed up all the time.

It makes me want to loose my mind. Only kidding!

[Ezlivin]

21. The award must go to "it's" versus "its"

On Sunday I opened the paper to see a nice, full-page, full-color advertisement for Great Wolf Lodge displaying an apostrophe to make "its" possessive. It was set in big 48 point type. You couldn't miss it.

It drives me nuts. Apostrophes are dropped willy-nilly into all kinds of words, but I see them most often in "its."

[frogmarch]

22. Charles' book or Charles's book?

Which is correct? I'd say Charles's book.

In Jesus' name. Correct or incorrect?

[Dervill Crow]

23. It depends entirely upon the pronunciation.

If you pronounce the 's at the end as a separate syllable, you add the 's.

[LanternWaste]

24. And the students of today are the copy editors of tomorrow...

Since we know that schools distribute the appropriate tools for a student's education, it would seem that more and more students are "too cool" to use these tools to their best interests. And the students of today are the copy editors of tomorrow...

[Perry Logan]

26. They're all wingers. What do you expect?

[lame54]

27. YOUR crazy if you think YOU'RE post will make a difference

:sarcasm:

[Evoman]

28. Shit, I make that mistake all the freakin time.

Your all just being nit picky :evilgrin:

[nosmokes]

31. You're on your own. I can't be bothered today.

[Dulcinea]

32. What happened to subject-verb agreement?

I get notes from my daughter's preschool all the time that say things like "Timmy pull Jimmy's name in the drawing." It makes me want to scream. When did this become acceptable?