Wednesday, 28 November 2007
The Shame.
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.
The Engine Room was designated a genius level blog. "Great," I thought, "with the A.A Gill quote in the last post and the most indecipherable paragraph ever in a post from a couple of weeks ago we should walk it." (Incidentally, I'm not sure how I managed to insert hyperlinks into a thought, but it happened. )
Imagine my horror when, upon inserting our URL, I was confronted with this:
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
posted by Gez at 10:40 pm
7 Comments
Saturday, 6 October 2007
The amazing, colossal adventures of Word Girl
This is a great idea. Word Girl teaches kids a new word in each exciting instalment. It's actually quite funny.
I was a bit miffed when the girl on the desk said:
You used tonnage wrong.I think she should have said 'incorrectly'.
Anyway, hopefully this will nurture a new generation of grammar nazis.
Labels: fun, video, vocabulary
posted by Gez at 4:16 pm
4 Comments
Saturday, 12 May 2007
Welcome to GrammarBlog
Although I am well aware that the first post of any blog rarely gets read I thought I'd use the opportunity to tell you what GrammarBlog is all about and my reasons for starting it up.
I think I'm fairly normal kind of bloke, I'm not particularly anal or fussy and I'm certainly not a neat freak, but every time I see a misplaced apostrophe or get a text from someone calling me a "m8" I get annoyed, really annoyed.
You see grammar is important. The English language, due to the nature of its multiple origins, is brilliantly diverse and flexible. A well written piece of prose can convey so many levels of meaning but this meaning can be lost if the grammar is neglected. And yet is it being neglected all the time. I see examples everyday: on signs; on the internet; in speech and even in newspapers.
What isn't being neglected is being actively destroyed. In the last ten years the instant communication of email and text messages has meant that people value speed of response above all else. This led to smileys.
Well no more. Not in my name!
It's time for me and my fellow bloggers to fight back. GrammarBlog will be used to demonstrate examples of English that just makes us want to pull our hair out and hopefully we'll stop being annoyed long enough to find some of it funny.
posted by Gez at 5:57 pm
0 Comments
GrammarBlog has moved
We are now live at http://www.grammarblog.co.uk/
Contact us
If you want to tell us your pet peeves, send us examples of grammar abuse you have witnessed or even ask our advice on grammar matters, we'd love to hear from you. Email us on 
Subscribe and Share
Previous Posts
Archives
Friends
- 1000 Tiny Things I Hate
- AA Gill's Times Column
- Apostrophe Abuse
- SPOGG
- Stephen Fry's blog
- The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks
- Mighty Red Pen
- lowercase L
- Literally a web log
- Elisabeth Writes
- Never in all my life
- The Engine Room
- I Love Typography
- spEak You’re bRanes
- Passive Aggressive Notes
- T.E.A.L.
Enemies (aka The List)
Reading List
It's not just you
