Grammarmanners Part III

I am an apostrophe nut. Especially on printed signs. The excess apostrophe's (haha!) drive me crazy!

Also, when people use "I" instead of "me" (as in your example, "Samuel and I") because they think "I" is somehow always more correct. The best hint/rule I got for that one is to take the other person out of the sentence and then decide which you'd use. "I went to the store" can be "Jane and I went to the store." "That car belongs to me" can be "That car belongs to Jane and me." You wouldn't say "that car belongs to 'I'."

Ah, good times...

Robin says: Do you know about the Apostrophe Protection Society? Their website is here:

http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/

I believe you would enjoy them!

I'm with the apostrophe crowd ("it's" versus "its" is not hard!), but my worst "nails on the blackboard" is modifying unique. It's either unique or it isn't, nothing in between. It is not kind of unique, sort of unique, or rather unique.

It is unique. Or it is not.

Thanks!

Misuse of "fewer than" and "less than." At least the supermarkets are catching on and correcting the signs over the "12 items or fewer" checkout lanes!

Robin says: I've noticed that too!

Speaking of supermarket errors, I was just at DeMoula's and noticed one of my pet peeves ... I don't know if you'd call it grammatical or not--but it's when people (or, in this case, signs) repeat a word that is actually the last letter of the acronym. Like "PIN Number." The "N" in "PIN" stands for "number." My friends know this bugs me and will sometimes deliberately work the conversation around so they can say, "So I was putting my PIN number in the ATM machine ..."

I am by no means a grammatical expert, but the misuse of 'good' and 'well' bugs me!

I also have a quick question. When labeling pictures, would you write "My sister and I" or "Me and my sister"? I use the "take the other person out of the sentence" rule but that instance still confuses me.

Robin says: Well, as a courtesy, you always put your sister first! Whether you use "me" or "I" depends on if you're subjects or objects. So "My sister and me" if that's the whole of the caption, but "My sister and I are enjoying the Pyramids" if there's a verb. But, for the benefit of future generations, why not just label them "Colleen and [Sisname]"?

Someone I work with regularly says "salesmens" for the plural of salesman. It aggravates me to no end!

My biggest pet peeve is when people say "nucular" instead of nuclear. Every time the president says that word it drives me nuts!

Thanks for the clarification, Robin!

My biggest pet peeve is tab characters in source code where space characters would suffice. Oh wait, wrong forum. OK, I'll go with its/it's, followed closely by there/their. Its driving is driving me mad!

You know what drives me nutz? When someone describes someone else as "X person," which is often heard as degrading. The person is not defined by X. For example, a "disabled person" is not primarily disabled, but primarily a person. They have a disability. Someone may be offended by that. When you break your arm and can't use the computer mouse, are you a "broken-armed person" or a "person with a broken arm"? How is that much different from someone with a disability?

So the respectful phrase is "person with a disability." For the "overweight person," I would guess that perhaps they may prefer "person with a weight issue" even if it's not denotatively correct. Is something else preferable? "Person with obesity"? "Person with weight trouble"? "Person with weight concerns"? "Person with alternative definitions of appropriate weight and standards of beauty"?

By the way, "issue" has 35 definitions, according to Dictionary.com. That's a lot of definitions to keep track of for one word! Give us a break!
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=issue

Robin says: So many "issues" to unpack! Yes, those multiple definitions--and a huge lexicon--is only one of the reasons English is a really hard language to learn. Which is why I'm for cutting ESL speakers a lot of slack and letting them get it at their own pace. In technospeak, English is a many-to-many database: most words have more than one meaning, and for any meaning, there's probably more than one word to describe it.

Regarding fat people, you can just call them fat people. (If it's any of your business to be describing their weight at all, that is.) One of the things I've learned through getting involved in Fat Acceptance is that "fat" is not a bad word! And if someone self-describes as "fat," it's rude to say, "Oh, I don't think of you as fat!" That's basically saying, "You're too good to be one of THOSE people." It's like telling a black person you don't think of them as black. You're not complimenting them, you're insulting everyone else in their group.

I share Caroline's loathing of modifying "unique." I know I'm on the losing end of this battle, but disagreement in number really irks me -- "Did anyone use this towel to dry their hands?" "His or her" is awkward, but the inelegance of mismatched singular and plural makes me cringe.

Robin says: Ah, you'll get no love from me on that one! I do it all the time. So did William Shakespeare and Jane Austen.

I am an editor, so I have a million pet peeves, the most annoying of which for me is what I call "oversophistication." The "sister and I" falls into this category. People often misuse the language while trying to sound more intelligent or sophisticated.
However, I will never, ever correct someone's grammar unless they ask me to. And, as you can see from my previous sentence, I'm guilty of the "someone/they" misuse. There comes a time when a grammar error is so commonly made that the correct version sounds wrong. And, although I say it or post it on a message board, I would never write it in anything formal. I've always maintained that conversational English and written English are two different languages.

Robin says: Wholehearted agreement with everything. Language is always evolving; I think "someone/they" though technically incorrect is the best solution given the alternatives. And you're right about different registers for different situations.

It really irks me when a co-worked sends me an error-filled e-mail. I'm an intern at a very-well known non-profit organization, and I dislike the thought that people who have worked here for 20 years are sending grammatically incorrect e-mails, not only to me, but to donors and to other companies with which we correspond. I feel it reflects badly on our well-reputed organization, but of course I cannot correct anyone. But for all I know, the people on the receiving end of those e-mails write the same way and wouldn't notice the mistakes!

I am, however, often guilty of ending a sentence with a preposition. I almost wrote the sentence above as, "...companies we correspond with." If I had been speaking, I definitely would have said it that way. Certain elements of "proper grammar" just are not compatible with the way people usually speak.

Misuse of "fewer" and "less" bothers me quite a bit and makes me want to correct people. "No, you do not have less shoes than I do, you have FEWER shoes!"

I’m sorry, I have to disagree with the mostly-unique haters. That particular fusspoint is pedantic and substitutes an arbitrary rule (“unique is absolute”) for common sense, which can easily encompass the idea of one thing having more unique qualities than anther thing. And since one of my pet peeves is people who peeve with insufficient resources to back them up, I’ll quote Random House on the matter:

"Many authors of usage guides, editors, teachers, and others feel strongly that such “absolute” words as complete, equal, perfect, and especially UNIQUE cannot be compared because of their “meaning”: a word that denotes an absolute condition cannot be described as denoting more or less than that absolute condition. However, all such words have undergone semantic development and are used in a number of senses, some of which can be compared by words like more, very, most, absolutely, somewhat, and totally and some of which cannot.
The earliest meanings of UNIQUE when it entered English around the beginning of the 17th century were “single, sole” and “having no equal.” By the mid-19th century UNIQUE had developed a wider meaning, “not typical, unusual,” and it is in this wider sense that it is compared: The foliage on the late-blooming plants is more unique than that on the earlier varieties. The comparison of so-called absolutes in senses that are not absolute is standard in all varieties of speech and writing."

"unique." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 28 Mar. 2008. .

I could write a book, but here's two:

#1: using "myself" in a non-reflexive way, as in: "He gave his tickets to David and myself." (See Tara's "oversophistication" comment.)

#2: the "whole entire" thing.

Of the phrases I hear every day, I think "Just an FYI" is the one I would pay the most never to hear again.
I'm also in long-term mourning for the subjuctive contrary-to-fact construction in sportcasting, which has been replaced by a weird sort of future tense ("If he makes that putt/tackle/catch," instead of "If he'd made that putt/tackle/catch" --when it's already known that he did not make it.) That ship has probably sailed.

Amusingly enough, grammar manners came up in Miss Manners' column this week as well - see the second question here:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_8725669?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com

One thing that bothers me about English is that there is no gramatically correct, gender-neutral pronoun in common use that replaces his/hers. I am fully aware that "their" is gramatically incorrect, but I use it anyway. I was explaining this to my mom yesterday (it really bothers her), and I said that it's a choice between grammar and gender, and while grammar usually has my support, gender needs my support more this time.

I especially dislike the expression "guys and girls." Not only does it sound to me like an expression used by semi-literate characters in a 1940s gangster movie (even though I belong to Generation X), but it also implies, I think, that boys shouldn't have to grow up and girls aren't allowed to grow up. Miss Manners, too, is tired of the practice of calling a group of men and women "guys." In fact, that happens when the group is all-female, too, as I've observed. (She very much dislikes THAT.) I think a great exercise now and then for families and schools would be to insist on using only the terms "men and women," "girls and boys" and "ladies and gentlemen" for a week or so. Watch the mental literacy of the general population grow again! Of course, the parents and teachers would have to struggle to watch their mouths too, given the informailty of adults these days.

*whispered aside to MelissaJane*

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "unique" as "Of which there is only one; one and no other; single, sole, solitary," without a hint of "not typical, unusual." You might disagree with those who use "unique" exclusively in this sense, but they do have sufficient resources for doing so.

Many of the ISSUES that bug people are not issues at all. The Boston Globe regularly publishes "The Word" by Jan Freeman, one of the few language columnists in the US who actually knows what she's talking about. I suggest that everyone at even the slightest risk of word rage hie themselves (yes, singular 'they') over to the archives to find out what Ms. Freeman has to say about their particular bugaboo(s). And while they're at it, they should get hold of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage so that they can avoid any future incorrections.

1) Agree with apostrophe misuse as above.

2) 'impact' as a verb - as in 'X impacts Y'. Unless X is a meteor then X has an impact upon Y.

3) 'key' - as in 'this is key'. Usually it's used as a synonym for 'important', but 'key' goes beyond that. The 'key' issue is THE important issue which 'unlocks' the entire problem.

4) Don't even get me started on 'task' as a verb, as in 'She was tasked to go to the copy room and ...'

Robin says: You are giving me severe flashbacks to the administrative job I had at Harvard ... have you ever seen "Buzzword Bingo"? http://isd.usc.edu/~karl/Bingo/