Oh man, just found this blog after trolling through some of the other posts. It's totally my thing! The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks-making fun of bad punctuation since 2005. Check it out here.
The blog wasn't noticed much at first. But about six months ago, things started picking up. "You know how it happens _ one person links to you, then others do. Also, everyone has camera phones now," Keeley said in a phone interview. Earlier this week, she was linked on Yahoo!, which quadrupled her traffic for a couple days to about 2,000 hits _ though her record is still about 3,000 in a day.
What draws people? The humor, but also partly, Keeley admits, a sense of superiority, at least grammatically speaking _ something she tries to avoid herself. "I don't consider myself a prescriptivist or a pedant," she says (really). "So I'm open to critiques of my own language. I make plenty of mistakes myself."
Rampant quote abuse is a pet peeve of many writing teachers, of course. One of them, Pat Hoy, feels the larger problem is not the punctuation missteps _ that's bad enough _ but the reliance on quotes themselves, by writers who should know better.
When people confuse the following, it makes me nauseated. If you're nauseated, it means you're feeling sick. If you're nauseous, it means you're making others sick (causing nausea in others).
I hear people say "I'm feeling nauseous," and I think to myself "please stay away from me, I don't want to become nauseated."
Check out the list of my pet peeves:
adverse / averse
affect / effect
aggravate
alleged
all right
altogether
among / between
assure / ensure / insure
auger / augur
average / median
blatant / flagrant
capital / capitol
complement / compliment
comprise
consul / council / counsel
convince / persuade
discreet / discrete
disinterested / uninterested
enervate
enormity / enormousness
factoid
fewer/ less
flammable / inflammable
flaunt / flout
forte
gender / sex
hopefully
impact
impeach
imply / infer
incredible / incredulous
irony
irregardless
its / it's
kudos
lay / lie
leave / let
literally
mass / weight
mean
mischievous
nuclear
parameter
penultimate
peruse
phenomenon
plus
precipitate / precipitous
prescribe / proscribe
presently
principal / principle
renown
reticent
sacrilegious
seasonable / seasonal
sensual / sensuous
set / sit
that / which
unexceptionable / unexceptional
unique
utilize / use
wherefore
wreak / wreck
zoology
Reminds me of the Al Yankovic song:
Except she was always using the word "infer" When she obviously meant "imply" And I know that somw guys can put up with that kinda thing But frankly, I can't imagine why
And I told her, I said "Hey" Are we playin' horseshoes, honey? No I don't think we are You're close (close) but no cigar
Anyway, anybody here have any pet peeves regarding commonly confused words?
Here's a fantastic selection of tools for writers of any style. This is a list of tips aimed at improving your writing skills that I cribbed from another site here. Before you start firing off submissions to publishers or you embark on that eBook writing project, do yourself a favor and review.
All of these tools come various sections of Poynter Online which is a rich resource for journalists. If for some reason you want to see last year's post (for the comments perhaps), you can do so here.
When you're talking about the 1990s, or the 1830s, or the 1250s, you're not talking about something that belongs to the year 1990, or 1830, or 1250. So unless your sentence reads, "Britney Spears' Hit Me Baby One More Time' was 1250's #1 single," don't add an apostrophe between "0" and "s." It isn't required at all!
I know a better way to teach kids grammar: teach them foreign languages. We need to start enforcing that in our schools. They'll come away with a better understanding of English and grammar than an "old-school" grammar class could ever provide. Sprechen Sie Deutsch! Parlez Français! Hable Español! Parli Italiano! Gavarite Russkiy!
Interestingly, I once read a National Geographic article (I think it was in the early 1990's) in which a researcher described a single conversation (in American-Sign-Language) between 3 species: a human, a gorilla, and a chimpanzee. Here's an excerpt from the ABC article:
The Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, is home to seven bonobos -- a close relative of the chimpanzee -- and three orangutans. But if you think Iowa might be a strange place for them to live, don't say it out loud ... these apes understand English.
You can talk to the apes, and they know what you are saying.
The residents of the Great ApeTrust are part of groundbreaking language research where the apes are being taught to communicate with humans by pressing 350 lexigrams —symbols that appear on a screen and represent thoughts and objects.
The superstar is 26-year-old Kanzi, whom Bill Fields has been working with for years. To communicate, Fields speaks to Kanzi, who then points to the lexigrams to respond and demonstrate a level of understanding.
"Qualitatively, there is no difference between Kanzi's language and my language," Fields said. "It's a matter of degree."
The key to ensuring they grasp the language, the researchers said, is to start teaching them when they are young, just like you would with human babies.
In that National Geographic article, I remember the researcher also reportedly asked the chimpanzees which type of music they preferred, and they responded "Jazz".
Some of the chipanzees described in the article even made up new compound words, such as combining the word "Candy" and "Drink" to describe grape juice as "Candy-Drink".
My only stand is on behalf of better writing. I take no sides in the debate over capital punishment, which gives rise to today's point.
Too often, articles on Google News say someone is to be executed by lethal injection or is sentenced to be put to death by lethal injection. In each case, lethal is redundant. An injection that kills is lethal to begin with.
I am passively considering a career change. I'm passively pursuing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian situation. I'm passively engaging others in debate about better writing.
What is it that possesses bureaucrats to say they are actively considering, actively pursuing, actively engaging? For example, the paper told me this week my governor is actively considering a tax on 401k plans.
Is this like a submarine movie in which the captain searches with active and passive sonar? Can the governor passively consider a tax hike and then—ping!—switch to active consideration?
Of course not. It's bureaucratic jargon, garbage that's invading our language. You consider or don't consider, engage or don't engage, pursue or don't pursue. It's redundant and silly to say actively before any of these. To illustrate, try saying passively, the antonym of actively, instead.
Don't blame the bureaucrats. They can't help it. But there's no excuse for this junk appearing in articles, most of them—surprise, surprise—about government.
"Worst of all is the kind of jargon employed as an obfuscating technique in bureaucratic or political contexts," Fowler's Modern English Usage says in its lengthy entry on jargon. "Genuine communication in such areas of life has never been more important in our inflammatory and dangerous times."
I'm actively considering sending the author a thank you letter.
It's called the wayward apostrophe, the superfluous apostrophe or the errant apostrophe. I call it the #@%*&$@ apostrophe. It's the erroneous use of an apostrophe in common plural words and in other contexts.
You've seen it: a carved sign declaring The Smith's live in the home; a scrawled banana's for sale; a menu listing fresh prawn's. Some usage guides call this a greengrocer's apostrophe, as it shows up so often in the produce section (orange's, grape's, apple's).
Fowler's Modern English Usage says it once was proper to use an apostrophe to create a plural when a noun ended in a vowel. Since the mid-1800s, it says, grammarians have condemned this. "But it continues to appear, to the amusement of educated people, in signs and notices," it says.
"Superfluous apostrophes are a symptom of unedited prose and of the inexperienced writer," The Cambridge Guide to English Usage says. "As applicationsof the apostrophe begin to shrink, expert writers and editors are also less certain about its use."
Garner's Modern American Usage notes the wayward apostrophe often finds its way into the word says. Google News turns up plenty of articles with say's.
"The only possible cure is increased literacy," Garner's says.
After a storm, tornado, hurricane, flood, etc., bureaucrats assess damages. Speakers of English assess damage.
After a flood, one bureaucrat was quoted in the newspaper offering "a statement of damages from the storm events we had." He added that more money "would help us to recover some of the costs for the damages that occurred."
This kind of bureaucrat-speak is why God created paraphrasing, GrammarHell.com suggests. We'll simply wince at storm events and deal with damage/damages.
Garner's Modern American Usage notes that "the singular damage refers to loss or injury to person or property; the plural damages refers to monetary compensation for such a loss or injury."
The Associated Press Stylebooksays simply, "Damage is from destruction ... Damages are awarded as compensation for injury, loss, etc."
A tornado causes damage, followed by lawsuits seeking damages over shoddy construction.
