GrammarBlog

The Grerat Typo Inciden, originally uploaded by Gez D.

I took this ages ago then forgot about it until I was clearing the photos out of my phone. I like the double typo and the sound of the word "grerater".

Labels: newspapers, photos, spelling, typo

Our pals at The Engine Room have found a fun little gizmo that works out the reading level required for any blog on the interwebs.

I was so shocked that it took me more than 2 seconds to get annoyed with the copy on this banner. A blog can't read so how can the blog have a reading level? I think the sentence should be like so:

This blog's required reading level:

Anyway, I'm not happy. Obviously the technology is deeply flawed. I demand a Goresque re-count! Something must be done to right this wrong!

I know there are those who may think that I shouldn't take this too seriously; it's just a bit of fun; my competitive smugness is extreme to the point of being nauseous etc. To those people I say, "Hi, have we not met before?"

Traditional pedants would have a field-day with that terminal preposition but I'll push on; no time for an edit in this Kerouacian ramble. (Goresque, Kerouacian, how many more names can I mangle into the vague resemblance of an adjective?)

I was slightly heartened to see that Apostrophism was awarded the same level of reading requirement. Slightly.

P.S. Well done to J.D. and the gang at the Engine Room. I'm very fucking happy for you. See, I can be gracious. I'd also like to add that I definitely didn't run http://engineroomblog.blogspot.com through the readability test to check that you were telling the truth. Ahem.

Labels: Al Gore, friends, fun, grammar, Kerouac, rants, wrong word

I do enjoy broadsheet restaurant criticism.

The best writers use a delightful combination of pretension, rudeness and malevolence. The unspoken concord between writer and reader - i.e. that this is just food and hence reviewing it is faintly ridiculous - provides the opportunity for gleeful childishness and linguistic showboating. GrammarBlog paragon AA Gill excels in food writing; he often spends most of his Sunday Times column digressing in relatively straightforward English, before delivering a savage, unusually concocted onslaught in the last 200 words.

The Blonde’s jellied ham was wet, cold, bacon-flavoured string with green bits. The main course, the faggots, was under-seasoned liverish balls that sat in a thin dew; they should have been raucous, gay offal bollocks wrapped in fatty caul and doused in a gravy made out of mink thong.

I also enjoy Michael Winner's food column. Winner has a different style: short, sharp, bilious sentences that bubble and snap with his slightly old-fashioned vocabulary.

Great Queen Street is awful, ghastly, ill-run, absurd. For a start this dump is so pretentious it doesn't put its name or its street number anywhere. Not on the window, not on the awning. Nothing.

Labels: AA Gill, Food Criticism, Michael Winner, top ten

Dirty Dicks in this photo; a glazed ass in the last Who says GrammarBlog is puerile?

Labels: apostrophe abuse, photos, signage

I'm not sure what's more entertaining: the apostrophe abuse or the crop of the photo.

Labels: apostrophe abuse, signage, white van man

Found on my current favourite blog, Passive Aggressive Notes, this example of a comma splice altering the meaning of a sentence is a lesson to all who use commas like confetti.

Labels: comma, comma splice, funny, passive-aggressive notes, punctuation

Ignoring the apostrophe abuse, left is the new down in Edinburgh.

Labels: apostrophe abuse, photos

Labels: christmas, GrammarBlog appeal, signage, Xmas

Labels: Back to the Future, birds of a feather, k9, kaiser chiefs, luftwaffe, microsoft, mobile phone, paul ross, phones 4u, predictive text, profanity, Superman

Had a leek, originally uploaded by Gez D.

This photo was taken by me in the very office I work in. I hope whoever wrote this note won't take offence at my posting of it.

Labels: photos, spelling, wrong word

Labels: guardian, language, profanity, Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker

Sir:— You have behaved like an impetiginous-Croyle! like those inquinate, Crass-sciolists who envious of my moral celsitude, carry their nugacity to the height of creating symposically the facund words which my polymathic genius uses with uberty to abligate the tongues of the weetless! Sir—you have crassly parodied my own pet words, as though they were tangrams. I will not coacervate reproaches—I would abduce a veil over the atramental ingratitude which has chamferred even my undicerptible heart. I am silent on the foscillation, which my coadjivancy must have given you when I offered to become your fautor and admincle. I will not speak of the lippitude, the ablepsy, you have shown in exacerbating me—one whose genius you should have approached with mental discalceation. So I tell you sir syncophically, and without supervaceneous words, nothing will render ignoscible your conduct to me. I warn you that I would vellicate your nose, if I thought that any moral diathrosis could be thereby performed—if I thought that I should not impignorate my reputation by such a digtadiation.

Labels: language, vocabulary

Labels: photos, road markings, spelling, top ten

Would you like your steak Simply Grilled? Sky TV on a Big Screen and Bar Snacks served All Day. We sell Clothes and Accessories for Adults, Teenagers, Kids and Much More. I love it when Capital Letters are Abused.

This topic has quietly reared its repugnant little head a number of times in recent posts, but deviously managed to avoid scrutiny via a 'safety in grammatical howler numbers' policy. Well, no more. Your game is up Mr Rogue Majuscule. You've been plying your heinous trade for too long. It's time you got your comeuppance in the only language you really understand: brutal, ugly violence. Boris, fetch me the Stick. And a Towel.

I got carried away there but I would hope you understand my frustration. Capital letters are an important aspect of written English, but I've never been able to ascertain quite why people abuse them so much. After all, English has a reasonably simple set of rules: capitalise the first letter of sentences; capitalise the first letter of proper nouns (and adjectives which stem from proper nouns). There are subtleties, of course, but in general usage I can't see any real potential tripwires. So I suppose there must be something peculiar (or German) about the leagues of shop-owners, publicans and restaurateurs who, in some sort of bizarre homage to Jesse Ventura in Predator, seem compelled to spray thousands of arbitrary capital letters into their sentences until nothin', nothin' on this earth, coulda lived.

18th Century English apparently capitalised all written nouns (in the same way as modern German), but I find it difficult to believe that a faint linguistic hangover from this period is responsible for modern-day abuse. I think it is actually more to do with a lack of trust (or confidence?) in writing's power to deliver a simple message, and a desperation to emphasise.

It's as if the author of the typical 'blackboard' pub menu doesn't believe that the average punter can actually process more than three words at once, and hence it's a battle to keep their attention when you're telling them that the Chicken Balti w/ Rice comes with a free Pint of Lager.

I also think marketing and brand saturation plays a part. People are so used to branded goods that they're losing the ability to discern between lunch and Lunch. Christ – I bet there really is a brand of takeaway sandwiches called Lunch, isn't there? I daren't Google it.

Labels: capitalisation, randomised caps

"Brew" Ridge, originally uploaded by DiegoLuego.

This one has everything.

Unnecessary quotation marks? Check.
Irritating marketing spelling (thru)? Check.
Apostrophe abuse? Check.
Unnecessary capitalisation? Check.
Spelling error? Check.

Heaven preserve us.

Labels: apostrophe abuse, foreign language spelling errors, marketing copy, photos, punctuation, quote me happy, randomised caps, signage, spelling, top ten

A reader has emailed in.

Hi,

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people on Facebook or Myspace will put captions on their photos reading "John, Bill, and I" or "Mark and I at the beach". Shouldn't it be "John, Bill, and me"? You wouldn't show a picture to someone and say "this is I at the beach". You would say "this is me at the beach" so shouldn't you use "me" even when you add other people's names to it?
Just wanted to make sure I was correct before I jumped on my soap box.

Thanks,

Christan

'Myself' is no better than 'I' as an object. 'Myself' is not a sort of all-purpose intensive form of 'me' or 'I'. Use 'myself' only when you have used 'I' earlier in the same sentence: 'I am not particularly fond of goat cheese myself.' 'I kept half the loot for myself.'

All this confusion can easily be avoided if you just remove the second party from the sentences where you feel tempted to use “myself” as an object or feel nervous about “me.” You wouldn’t say, “The IRS sent the refund check to I,” so you shouldn’t say “The IRS sent the refund check to my wife and I” either. And you shouldn’t say “to my wife and myself.” The only correct way to say this is, “The IRS sent the refund check to my wife and me.” Still sounds too casual? Get over it.

Labels: facebook, grammar, myspace, pet peeves, pronoun, reading list, top ten

Labels: calvin, cartoon, hobbes, top ten, verbing, wrong word

Why is this so hard for you?, originally uploaded by vebelfetzer.

Awful use of a comma and an inappropriate exclamation point.

Labels: comma, exclamation marks, photos, punctuation, twitter