Goodbye, cruel words: English. It's dead to me.

WaPo ^ | September 19, 2010 | Gene Weingarten

[NonValueAdded]

Shouldn’t this have been written in French?

[Vroomfondel]

Muphry's Law

[behzinlea]

Any writer who would tow the line on proper grammar and word usage might be a shoe-in for a Nobel Prize in literature today.

But, u no, it ain't gonna happen 4 a long time.

[Scythian]

Me fail English? That unpossible ...

[Eepsy]

http://grammartips.homestead.com/toetheline.html

[Scythian]

Ending a sentence on a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

[behzinlea]

Eggzactly. That's what I be sayin.'

Hint: it's also shoo-in, not shoe-in.

[dfwgator]

Okay, I know you're anxious to jump right in and start speaking English, but there's a couple of things I need to know first, because I've never done this before. So, how many of you would say you speak English fairly well, but with some difficulties?

A little English?

Yes? You speak some English?

Son of Beetch.....Sheet!

[Class in unison] Son of Beetch.....Sheet!

[Eepsy]

I was just sayin’. You didn’t have to go all Chrononhotonthologos on me....

[Billthedrill]

It may be a bit unfair to consider the ink-stained wretches of the copy desk as bellwethers in the matter of the deterioration of English language standards. These do tend to be people more conversant with television than the printed word despite the latter being their living, and one sometimes wonders if they ever read anything at all, even their own product.

I recall one such creature "correcting" a letter I once wrote to the Mercury-News, replacing the appropriate "arrant" with the inappropriate "errant," with a predictable and deleterious effect on the semantic content of the sentence. This was not so much an evil plot of a liberal rag (which it is) to obscure the golden prose of a conservative correspondent (which I am) but more a case of a well-meaning ignoramus intent on dragging his readers down to his level. Nevertheless, it was my name that appeared beneath. No literate jury would ever convict me for continuing the editorial discourse with a fire axe.

All that is in the keeping of an ordinary citizen is to do the best that he or she can, armed with computer-based, automagical spell-checkers holding skimpy 10,000-word lexicons, and dependent on an occasionally faulty memory for the rules of grammar and syntax that are yet beyond mechanical aid, thank God. One might hope for more professional standards from a professional. One might also hope for the Easter Bunny to poop chocolate eggs.

[LibLieSlayer]

That is today’s public education system!!!! Post of the day!

LLS

[Mopp4]

Goodbye, cruel words: English. It's dead to me.

Here’s some words and phrases I’d like to see die. Just listen to conversations and interviews and see how overused these are:

Absolutely
“you know…”
“I mean…”
“I was like...”
“just so you know…”
Constantly ending a statement with “OK ?”
“do you know what I’m saying ?”

[Em and Brets Mum]

“Use of good for well. The poor adverb died years ago.”

Conversation heard today: “How are you?” “I’m good, and yourself?”

Ugh.

[Daffynition]

[Revolting cat!]

Its like awesome texting!

[Daffynition]

I miss The *Bills* ....Buckley and Safire.

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.
~William Safire

[Daffynition]

Do they pay to learn Ebonics too?

[Daffynition]

[GOPJ]

I don’t even need to read it. I already know that everybody else is better than us. The MSM tells me this, every day.

And yet they find it odd we cancel our subscriptions and change the channel...

[LibLieSlayer]

If that is Aunt Zetuni and her friend... they're both kenyan and that is about all that you can expect of them. They did learn enough English to fill out their welfare registration, section 8 housing allowance and illegal alien "get out of jail free" cards.

LLS