January 22, 2007

Grammar Girl is apparently quite poplar.
posted by petebest 17 years ago
  • Take that, Lynne so-called Truss!
  • She doesn't send emails back with big red marks on them? That ain't no fun.
  • Isn't no fun, GramMa.
  • Don't you go correctin' none of Gramma's gramma.
  • Isn't any fun, petebest.
  • He is a bit of a bore, isn't he.
  • When Grammar Girl met Spelling Guy, They sought a bed on which to lie (For lie it is, and lay it isn't). What a happy conjugate visit!
  • Grammar Girl told me That it aint no myth A preposition is a bad thing To end a sentence with.
  • Grammar Girl and Pete the Poet Had a trifling row 'cause grammar rules And babbling fools Don't get along no how.
  • There once was a girl named Grammar and on rules of language she'd hammer Then along came this mess of speech named petebest Now she spends all her days in the slammer!
  • I could've been Grammar Girl. If only I'd been smarter.
  • Lara, honey, I'm sorry. You could never be a plain Grammar Girl. You're our Glamour Girl.
  • Is not fun, all y'all.
  • It's spelled ya'll, yankee. Don't ask why.
  • Why? What else is the contraction of "you all" than y'all? There is no "a" in "you." It appears you, sir, are INCORRECT.
  • Didja ketch that? They're spelling yawl wrong.
  • Lara, honey, I'm sorry. You could never be a plain Grammar Girl. You're our Glamour Girl. *blushes* *gives Gramma a stolen daisy*
  • *counts personal daisy collection* Hey!
  • Is Grammar Girl hot?
  • There goes yer gold star, Mr. D. (I checked in the back and the answer was "true", y'know fwiw.)
  • I'm told that the Grammar Grill is quite hot, indeed. Very handy if you have to eat your words.
  • Stop. Grammar time Every time you read me The Grammar's just super I'm dope on the nouns And I'm magic on the verbs Now why would I ever Stop doing this? When others writing books That just don't hit I've toured around the world From London to the Bay It's Grammar, Grammar Girl, Girl Grammar, Yo Grammar. And the rest can go and play Can't parse this
  • nunia: See, you went and asked "why", and I done told ya not to. "Contraction"?? That's what a lady does when birthin a young'un. We who use "ya'll" don't much care for yer fruity librul grammar. (And, really, if you're going to mangle a word, why not mangle the fuck out of it?) I must say, the liberal elitist in me enjoys the irony of arguing the grammatical correctness of y'all vs. ya'll. It's very funny to me that there's a wiki on the subject!
  • Please Grammar Don't Hurt 'Em
  • MonkeyFilter: if you're going to mangle a word, why not mangle the fuck out of it?
  • She's sorta half wrong about some things, too... not that I am a grammar genius by any means. ("Sorta"?) There are problems with grammar in America, not least because different industries use different style guides. Something correct by AP standards (used in most but not all American journalism) may be incorrect by Chicago standards (used in book publishing). I was taught the so-called "Oxford comma" in school - you know, "bread, milk, and cheese," rather than "bread, milk and cheese." People I know who studied journalism generally go with the latter. Much English grammar is idiomatic, or just idiotic, because it was forced on us circa 1700 by grammarians who were obsessed with Latin but were not linguists. They paid little attention to the actual structure and origins of English and tried to force a Latin grammatical structure onto it, which doesn't quite work. So, what is "correct" doesn't always make sense, and many of our verbs are irregular. One thing Grammar Girl is quasi-wrong about is "whom" - the very last I heard, at least a decade ago, was that it was close to being considered archaic. I still use it now and then, but I wouldn't worry too much about the "right" way to use it, as mentioned in the sidebar of one of those articles. I also wouldn't put too much faith in her opinion on the Kansas's/Kansas' issue. Kansas' would only be correct if the word represented the possessions of more than one Kansa... according to the very latest thing I've read on the issue, just a few months ago. I think the plural of Kansas would be Kansases and you would work the possessive plural out from there, Kansases' (obviously unnecessary, as there is only one Kansas, but that's where it's appropriate to use the apostrophe in the way shown). But I'm not 100% sure about that, only that Kansas's is more appropriate than Kansas', regardless of Justice Thomas's propensity for error (in so many ways). My fiance's last name has this same pluralization/possessive issue, so I'm sure I'll have approximately forever to work it out.
  • Oh, my great and powerful LordSludge, I humbly forgive you, and will gladly pay for numerous teeth implants. I cannot, however, do anything about how close your eyes are. Oh, and Strunk and White. Rule One.
  • "Whom" is archaic? Aw, bummer! Is the subjunctive tense also dead? (But is is nice to know that Strunk and White's rule on plural possesives that end in "s" is making a comeback. Company lawyer Steve Mitchel, eat your heart out.) And, by the way, what happened to the use of quotation marks to refer to something the way I did to "whom" up there? Is the substitution of italics mostly a word processing thing? Even that seems more labor intensive than "'s,") and the use of html for italics is just show-off typing pride, in my view. And, I really need to know why Major Sources say I needed to put the comma inside the quotation marks in the paragraph above. The comma is not part of the "'s" issue, itself. Hope me!
  • I've always consciously (outside of English class, anyhow) disobeyed the comma inside the quote if the comma is not part of the quotation. The rule is bad, IMO, as it's misleading. I also hate using apostrophes to indicate plurality, as in: ---> Mind your p's and q's. I feel it's more accurate to write that as: ---> Mind your "p"s and "q"s. In this case the letters "p" and "q" are being referenced, so why not put quotes around them? Then add an "s". Simple. Also, here's a talking picture show I made just fer nunia.
  • *faints*
  • :chortles: