Thursday, November 19, 2015

Grammar rules

There are numerous sites around the Internet where the rules of grammar are chiselled in stone and where frighteningly knowledgeable people are ready to scold you for your little mis-uses.

I've been one of them although I always tried to cajole rather than scold. The Writing Resource, a team of writers, editors and educators used a blog I wrote about grammar and proper use of words. Many of my pet peeves are included in the blog and I hope you'll go and have a look because for sure, you'll see that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I'm not going to rehash my favourites (tow the line? bare the pain?) but they're there, along with scores of others.

You might think we've come to the end of the line. All the mistakes have already been made and from now on, it's just a matter of re-hashing the old ones until everyone has been corrected and chastened and, in the end, enlightened.

Think again. I have a new one.

A few days ago, I was reading the comment thread in one place or another and found myself oddly absorbed in a heated discussion between two people – strangers to me and, I think, strangers to each other. One of them became very annoyed which caused the other to say (and I'm paraphrasing both of them): "You seem to have taken unbridge at something I've said but I stand by my opinion." The other guy said, "Yeah, well your opinion is wrong and furthermore, I didn't take 'unbridge' as you said. I took 'umbridge'."

Well, I take umbrage at both of you. I considered dropping in on the conversation to say just that but I thought it would be obnoxious.

Good grammar and using words correctly are all very well but we must remain gracious.

4 comments:

  1. bare the pain? or should it be "bear the pain"?

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    1. Marilee, of course it should be "bear the pain"! It should also be "toe the line"! I guess I wasn't as clear as I should have been! ;-)

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  2. I liked English as it was taught when I was in school. However, I also understand that different people have different interests and areas of expertise. Also, today's grammar nazis would have been seen as anarchists 60 years ago. We are all ignorant of different things. Still, I grieve over each last gasp of a beautiful rule. The three different verbs, lie, lie and lay are dead. The concept of subjects and verbs agreeing as to number is dead.

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    1. I purposely avoided the word "nazi" as I'm not -- and have never been -- that. Being "queen" is much more benevolent. I am struck though by how many of the errors I see nowadays are the kind where people have heard a phrase or word and are writing it as they heard it, not as they might have seen it. I wrote about that here:
      http://www.twrblogtalk.blogspot.ca/2012/07/how-can-i-ignore-boy.html

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