Thursday, 10 January 2008
Through and Thru
Is anyone else really sick of seeing the word 'Thru'? Of all the various inane marketing spellings it's the one that winds me up the most. I'm not sure why. Maybe ubiquity is a factor; it does seem to crop up everywhere.
The Grammar Vandal currently has a poll on her site asking visitors their opinion on when it is acceptable to use 'thru'.
I'm on team Never.
Related posts: Grammar abuse in signage: part 9
Labels: marketing copy, pet peeves, spelling, thru
posted by Gez at 2:57 pm
14 Comments
Sunday, 4 November 2007
Me, myself and I
A reader has emailed in.
Hi,Christan, get out that soap box, chrome-plate it, polish it until it gleams, jump on it, brandish your megaphone with a smug flourish and shout about your peeve to your heart's content because you are absolutely right.
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
“I” is the first person singular pronoun when one is the subject of a sentence and “me” is the first person singular pronoun when one is the object. So “Tom, Dan and I made fun of the grammatically inaccurate drunk in the pub” is correct. However “the drunken man and his friends beat the living crap out of Tom, Dan and I” is incorrect.
I find this mistake especially annoying as it tends to be made by people trying too hard to avoid the word 'me' because it doesn't sound formal. In trying to sound clever they are making the same mistake they want to avoid. My advice: don't be so poncey!
Myself is another form that people wanting to appear grammatical like to overuse. Paul
'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.'Quite right, Paul. He goes on to summarise this topic better than I ever could, so I'll sneak out for a cup of tea while Paul finishes off for me.
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.*Well done for spotting my deliberate mistake, MRP. Good to know you are paying attention.
Labels: facebook, grammar, myspace, pet peeves, pronoun, reading list, top ten
posted by Gez at 5:38 pm
141 Comments
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Open till midnight
This really bugs me. Can everyone please read this next sentence carefully.
(see update below)
So unless these banners are advertising the fact that a till will be open at midnight (Rob me! Rob me!), they should read, "open 'til 12 midnight".
Credit to Dave Winer for spotting this and twittering about it.
**UPDATE**
I'm wrong (again). Till, rather than being a misspelled abbreviation, actually pre-dates until. Please know that I am suitably embarrassed. I considered taking this post down but I think it should stand here as a warning to other rash, ignorant bloggers too lazy to research their posts.
Labels: grammar, pet peeves, photos, punctuation, signage, spelling, wrong word
posted by Gez at 6:38 pm
3 Comments
Sunday, 7 October 2007
My biggest "US English" peeve.
I'm not going to have an anti-American rant. I realise that the US is poorly represented in the world grammar league (how I wish that existed) due to the misfortune of having a leader who seems to have missed out on his natural calling of becoming a P.E. teacher.
In fact despite the unnecessary alterations to our spelling and their propensity to "verb" words, most Americans I've met have been very well spoken. One could argue that this is because most of those Americans were met in countries other than the US so I've met a cross-section of the few who actually own a passport
– but let's not split hairs. There is one Americanism that drives me absolutely potty (actually there are a few but I promised not to have a rant).I could care less.How can an entire nation not realise that the above phrase means you do care?
I can't remember which TV programme I was watching when I first became aware of this phrase but I assumed it was a slip, that the speaker had meant to say, "I couldn't care less." But no, I keep on hearing it and every time it makes me twitch involuntarily with rage. I wouldn't mind so much if I only heard it used by guests on 'Springer' and MTV morons like Ashton Kutcher but in the past I've heard it used by Jon Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Moore, Larry David and more. These are clever people!
It came as a relief, therefore, when I found this neat little diagram on Flickr.
Well done Meredith G, GrammarBlog salutes you. Now all you have to do is spread that message to the other 214,999,999 English speakers in the US. Good Luck.
**Update: Meredith has got in touch to say she found the diagram at Incompitech. How very honest and gracious of you, Meredith, others might have been tempted to ninja the glory for themselves (and yes, I know I've used a verbed word after complaining about it in the post).
Labels: pet peeves, rants, top ten, US english, wrong word
posted by Gez at 10:22 pm
140 Comments
Saturday, 6 October 2007
President Bush: "Childrens do learn".
He went to Yale? Honestly?
Labels: bush, grammar, pet peeves, video
posted by Gez at 2:53 am
1 Comments
Monday, 30 July 2007
That is so random!
This morning on BBC Radio 1 a newsreader, a newsreader by the name of David Garrido, when introducing a clip from an interview with a player from the French rugby league team the Catalans Dragons, said the following:
He's French but spent a lot of time playing rugby in Australia, so stand by for possibly the most random accent ever.The sportsman in question was then heard talking in an accent that can only be described as half French, half Australian. How random! I had a similar random experience this morning when I got in my car, put the key in the ignition, turned it and the engine randomly started!
Grrr.
It's not random, you idiot. It's unusual, it's peculiar, it's possibly even a little bit bizarre but in no way is it random. It would be random if a Frenchman living for an extended period of time in Australia started to speak with a Jamaican accent or a broad Scottish brogue.
I shouldn't really pick on David, he's far from alone. I just expect more from a BBC journalist - even a sports reporter.
You can listen to the broadcast in question here, the offending sentence occurs on the 40 minute mark so you might want to use the skip function.
**UPDATE**
It appears the link I used was to the most recent broadcast, so as of Tuesday that link was incorrect. I've fixed it now. That link will work until 10am (GMT+1) next Monday.
Labels: pet peeves, rants, vitriol
posted by Gez at 9:30 am
5 Comments
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