College-level grammar lost on college students

The Digital Collegian (Penn State) ^ | Friday, Feb. 25, 2005 | Jen Winberry

[ThanhPhero]

I suppose calling something very unique is seen as making it more special than simply calling it different.

How can something be more or less unique? Unique means one of a kind. More one of a kind? Less one of a kind? If there are two of a kind then those two are not unique in any way unless they are a unique pair, in which as a pair they are not more or less unique than any other pair.

[k2blader]

As much as I do not like misuse of the word ignorant, there are several things that irk me more. One of them includes our good friend, Mr. Supposedly. This guy just tries to live a normal life like any other word and then we come along and try to hook him up with Ms. Supposebly.

Haha!!

[k2blader]

BTW, some FReepers really need to polish up their grammar too. Written mistakes are often worse than spoken ones.

[texasbluebell]

Unfortunately irregardless is not very unique. Its enough to make one nauseous.

Or rather...this is nauseous -- it's enough to make one nauseated. ;>)

[JohnnyZ]

Hopefully, I was at most nauseated and not actually nauseous, either. :)

Webster's says nauseous can be used to mean what most people use it to mean, and I agree. Also http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-nau1.htm.

[obnogs]

My pet peeves are "enormity" to mean "large", rather than "evil", and "on accident" - the opposite of "on purpose".

[JarheadFromFlorida]

Hey what up? What be's wrong wif my English?

[texasbluebell]

"...I always have a fear that I will make a grammatical error myself or an error in punctuation or spelling."


Then you might appreciate this little ditty I picked up along the way somewhere, which addresses one of my pet peeves:

The possessive of it is just its
But its usage gives people the fits.
They expect to see
An apostrophe.
But you shorten it is when it's it's.

[firebrand]

I recently heard a tiny little tot on the bus talking in perfect Valley Girl, complete with the "awesome," and the rising inflection (a sick form of pseudo-humility), and the "like" used every other word (a copout word, so you don't have to actually mean what you say).

Help. The Valley Girls are now raising children!

[lepton]

Amy Heckerling's 1995 hit Clueless introduced our generation to this horrible word, and ever since we have not been able to let go of it.

Methinks it was around for more than a decade before that.

[lepton]

"The Pope is laying in the hospital bed..."

Well that's because if they said he was lying in the hospital bed, half of them would cite it as proof he was telling falsehoods. ;)

[firebrand]

I don't think "like" goes back as far as the fifties in the current usage. "She was like" in place of "she goes," for the even older "she says," had been around for quite a while before I first saw it in a novel: Ann Tyler's The Accidental Tourist.

[guitfiddlist]

It's like, you know, I hate it when,like, people don't know how to spell lose. They spell it loose...you know?

Yeah, they sound like a buncha loosers. :^)

[VetoBill]

"I am so smart. I am so smart. S M R T... I mean S M A R T." - Homer Simpson

[MEG33]

Totally. ;)

[guitfiddlist]

Well, you know, she went to Wellesley, you know, and Yale Law School.

When I took courses at Wellesley (MIT/Wellesley had an exchange program), the ValleySpeak was everywhere - but with an elitist snobbery tacked on to it. "Like, I'm SUUUrreee....TOTally....no WAAAAayyyy", or "It's like because of the patriarchyyyyyy...it's totally institutionaaalllll."

[MEG33]

LOL..I am hearing it spoken as I read your post!

[elli1]

She also spoke the words 'Well, Tim' umpteen times. I have some extra time right now so let me do a re-cap for you. I counted 27 'you knows' so maybe I missed one or two. For brevity's sake, I have deleted a lot of Hillary's holy words...

haha...you are bad.

[elli1]

That is a pretty serious insult if you mean intellectually.

There are no wrong answers. Any way you chose to take it is correct.

[Graymatter]

I live in central PA. Been here a few years, transplanted from NJ. I'll never get used to hearing---and reading---outrages like "should of went," "It don't," and double negatives ("It don't mean nothing.") I wince when somebody splits an infinitive.

But I do what I can. I homeschool.