Posted on 06/20/2012 6:30:54 AM PDT by Constitutionalist Conservative
When Caren Berg told colleagues at a recent staff meeting, "There's new people you should meet," her boss Don Silver broke in, says Ms. Berg, a senior vice president at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., marketing and crisis-communications company.
"I cringe every time I hear" people misuse "is" for "are," Mr. Silver says. The company's chief operations officer, Mr. Silver also hammers interns to stop peppering sentences with "like." For years, he imposed a 25-cent fine on new hires for each offense. "I am losing the battle," he says.
Managers are fighting an epidemic of grammar gaffes in the workplace. Many of them attribute slipping skills to the informality of email, texting and Twitter where slang and shortcuts are common. Such looseness with language can create bad impressions with clients, ruin marketing materials and cause communications errors, many managers say.
[...]
Mr. Garner, the usage expert, requires all job applicants at his nine-employee firm—including people who just want to pack boxes—to pass spelling and grammar tests before he will hire them. And he requires employees to have at least two other people copy-edit and make corrections to every important email and letter that goes out.
"Twenty-five years ago it was impossible to put your hands on something that hadn't been professionally copy-edited," Mr. Garner says. "Today, it is actually hard to put your hands on something that has been professionally copy-edited."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Should of, would of, could of.
One of my many pet peeves is people saying “wala” instead of “voila”
***you know.***
Thirty five years ago I was at a welding trade school. During a break the teacher decided to tell some story. He began to use the word “You know” and I began to count them. He used the term FIFTEEN TIMES in less than two minutes.
Strunk and White is a manual of style, not a grammar. That you don’t grasp this distinction and somehow regard S&W as the apex of English shows that you are really out of your league in this conversation.
I really doubt you know enough about English grammar to opine that mine would not have been recognized as standard 150 years ago.
“How are you doing?”
Fair to midland?.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Point out that the ‘answer’ should be ‘fair to middling’ and you get a whole lot of “like man, ya know etc..etc..”.
On the rare, very rare, occasion that I will answer a text, I make sure that all my commas and question marks are in place. Same as IM ... Now, that drives ‘em crazy.
CC
On the use of the word “A”, I believe it was R Limbaugh that (I heard) explained one can tell when one is reading something because they tend to pronounce ‘A’ in a sentence as “A” while in ‘normal’ conversation “A” usually comes out as ‘auh - uh’.
Normal speak....I went to get ‘uh’ drink of water.
Reading teleprompter (ha) I went to get “A” drink of water.
Besides, using proper grammar is a “White Thing,” it ain’t keepin’ it real, y’know what I’m saying?
Your examples are common nouns.
What about “pairs”?
Virtually every eyeglass commercial offers “two pairs”.
I was always taught the plural of “pair” was “pair”.
It’s a prescriptive, all of which store some aspect of how people THINK the language should be, but actually isn’t. I don’t consider it the apex of English. the fact that you’ve resorted to insults 3 posts in a row shows you are really out of your league in this conversation.
I know that what you consider proper English grammar was NEVER how the masses used it. That’s the nature of prescriptives, they store how a certain class of people WANT the language to be but isn’t. And it’s not an opinion that how you talk is different than the standard 150 years ago, it’s a FACT. Language change, the prescriptives for English were very different in the 19th century to what was recorded in the 20th, it’s just how things go.
These gffes are ubiquitous on TV these days. Brian Kilmeade said “him and me” this morning on Fox.
I wonder how someone can get through school and still make a mistake like that?
The question you should be asking yourself is, "Who can be understood by more people? The one who speaks slang or the one who speaks correct grammar?"
An illiterate who invents speaking conventions can understand what I am saying, but the converse is not true.
Me and my wife see this all the time
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
My brother, he
or
my mother, she
..etc..
would get Sister Mary ? rushing for the yardstick
EUREKA!
That was changed the day that "pant" became the singular of "pants (trousers)."
Can you foresee a time when “those who don’t care” have pushed their version of the language to the point that they can’t communicate outside their limited circle?
It happens to degrees between generations and regions without severely mutilating the language, but you can also see how, taken to an extreme (aka Ebonics), it can make communication between groups of people nearly impossible even though they are using the same language.
There are many reasons to have standards, whether it be threaded fasteners, code libraries or English grammar, and they don’t necessarily indicate some sort of superiority complex by those promoting them.
The question you should be asking yourself is “if 99% of the people that hear it can understand it exactly as intended why is it not correct grammar?”
They aren’t inventing speaking conventions, they’re following the speaking conventions that actually get used. “Proper grammar” has always been for the upper classes, not how the masses spoke. That’s why copy editors exist, if normal people normally used “correct” grammar then they wouldn’t need editors. But “correct” grammar has always been a separate thing normal common usage.
I’ve noticed that, too, that Brits say “in hospital.” But we say “in school.”
Finger nails on a chalk board.
On the other hand, our Spanish is improving.
My pet peeve is people insrting an apostrophe in a plural word — especially a name, such as the Duncan’s. It’s either the Duncans (meaning the whole family), or the Duncans’ meaning the whole family owns something.
A handpainted sign stood at a main corner in Stafford, TX for years proclaiming “Jone’s Dirt Yard”. I never did meet Mr. Jone. He didn’t exist, of course. However, Mr. Jones delivered dirt to your house, if you paid him.
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