Monday, April 7, 2008

Eats, Shoots and Leaves...

Okay, the above title is the cute little book that I have been reading at night (well, one book) just for fun. John doesn't get it. Not many do. I, however, am appalled at the grammar errors that have been found upon further inspection. Thank you, new friend A, for alerting me! In my defense, I have to say that many were misspellings (or type-too-fasts, as I call them) when the dumb spell check option was just not working--check out the Friday that spell check started working again and relive my glee! I know that everything I type will not be grammatically correct (who said that??) mainly because of the tomato (long o) /tomato ( as in, "Say ahhhh.") issues that are out there regarding basic style. Punctuation inside of parentheses or out? Comma before the 'and' in a list (i.e. apples, oranges, and pears) or not? I prefer not. My favorites are the new accepted uses of the poor apostrophe--and as a woman who was a Mullins before marriage and is an Ennis now, I am saddened at the gross abuse of the apostrophe with regard to singular possession of words already ending in -s. It is Mrs. Ennis's book. Period. Yet every year my class and I create a class book through the Student Treasures program, the wise company decides to title our books, "By Mrs. Ennis' Class" and this is just not correct! I am one little girl and I have one (heckuva) class!! So enraged I have been by this (and collegial misuse as well) that I have gone online to search for the true answer. And you know what it is? Either is acceptable nowadays. My heart hurts.

I think I need to go diagram some sentences. That always calms me down.

Again, friends, do the kind thing when you see errors! Send alerts. Send them fast; send them furiously. Just make sure you send them!

Oh, and on the adoption front...not much new. My social worker wasn't there this morning after all. I will call tomorrow and schedule our interviews. Off to report cards now....

2 comments:

  1. The mistake that cuts me to the quick is "Your welcome." Who, I say, could possibly be that ignorant?!!!! Every time I see this gross abuse of the English language I am outraged. Who are these people?
    It is so nice to find someone who longs to preserve the integrity of the written language. Bless you and may God be with you in the trenches as you endeavor to spark a love for language in our youth.

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  2. Haha! Your sentence diagramming comment made me LAUGH!

    I will report errors to you as long as you promise to NOT tell me when you notice the word HAVE that I FREQUENTLY misspelled as ahve on my blog.
    :)

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