Grammar

[Keith]

I forget whether I started this one, but I'm nitpicky about grammar. Weird Al Yankovic's recent song "Word Crimes" is absolutely brilliant.

My main ones:

1) "Where are my keys at?"- You don't need the "at" there.
2) "Where are we going to?"- You don't need the "to" there.
3) "There are less cars on the road today." - You say "fewer cars".
4) "I like Peter, Paul and Mary."- I prefer "Peter, Paul, and Mary". (There's a band called Peter Bjorn and John lol)
5) "Him and I are going home." - It's "He and I"
6) "I could care less" - Why does that mean the same as "I couldn't care less"?

 

[gonzerd]

Since #6 was mentioned...

David Mitchell's Soapbox - Dear America...

Cheerio

 

[zurb]

The thing that bugs me the most is the American habit of dropping prepositions out all over the place.

When it comes to punctuation, often its not so much a grammar issue as a style issue. I tend to be a minimalist unless it affects understanding.

As aspies we tend towards a prescriptive rather descriptive approach to grammar. Unfortunately for us, languages continually evolve, and being too stuck on 'correctness' is just one more thing that can make us stand out as 'different' or weird.

Having said that, you might enjoy this book:
Eats, Shoots and Leaves

 

[DogwoodTree]

The one that really gets me is when people use "I", thinking it makes them sound so educated, when it really and truly should be "me."

"Drew and I are going to dinner" is correct, because "Drew and I" are the subjects of the sentence.

But "Nancy is going with Drew and I" is wrong, because "Drew and I" are objects of the preposition "with" and so should be in objective form: "Nancy is going with Drew and me" is correct.

If you wouldn't say "I" by itself, "Nancy is going with I" vs. "Nancy is going with me", then don't say it when you list someone else.

It is beyond amazing to me how many people get that wrong, people who should know better, people who are professional TV anchors or script writers or authors or whatever.

 

[royinpink]

Majoring in linguistics destroyed most of my grammarian tendencies...(the 20-second version: you learn that all language comes from somewhere, and what counts as 'correct' is defined by who has power, meaning that 'correct usage' amounts to what upper-middle class white people say, with some extra rules for how to avoid ambiguity in writing). But since prepositions were mentioned, I have to make a plug for David Foster Wallace's article (or here if that link doesn't work), where he points out that there is a prosodic reason to prefer certain final prepositions (the article also provides a decent summary of linguistic and sociological issues, if you're interested in that sort of thing):

For a dogmatic Prescriptivist, "Where's it at?" is double-damned as a sentence that not only ends with a preposition but whose final preposition forms a redundancy with where that's similar to the redundancy in "the reason is because" (which latter usage I'll admit makes me dig my nails into my palms). Rejoinder: First off, the avoid-terminal-prepositions rule is the invention of one Fr. R. Lowth, an eighteenth-century British preacher and indurate pedant who did things like spend scores of pages arguing for hath over the trendy and degenerate has. The a.-t.-p. rule is antiquated and stupid and only the most ayatolloid SNOOT takes it seriously. Garner himself calls the rule "stuffy" and lists all kinds of useful constructions like "the man you were listening to" that we'd have to discard or distort if we really enforced it.

Plus the apparent redundancy of "Where's it at?" [31] is offset by its metrical logic. What the at really does is license the contraction of is after the interrogative adverb. You can't say "Where's it?" So the choice is between "Where is it?" and "Where's it at?", and the latter, a strong anapest, is prettier and trips off the tongue better than "Where is it?", whose meter is either a clunky monosyllabic foot + trochee or it's nothing at all.
​

As for #4, it's called the Oxford comma (or serial comma) and I agree. Because this (of course Buzzfeed is a authoritative and credible source!). Or to save you some link-clicking:

 

[Ellylldan]

Oh, grammar.. English is not my native language, so I still make mistakes (especially when I'm in hurry or agitated) and it upsets me. But I'm trying to learn it better!

I'm quite a "grammar nazi" with my language (Russian) though. I find it very irritating when people don't care to learn properly their own language. (Of course, I'm not speaking about those with dyslexia or other difficulties.) I used to correct people since I was little. When I grew up I understood that people don't really like to be corrected so I've been doing my best to bite my tongue, but sometimes it's just too hard!

I don't know why people get offended when you correct them. I always tell everyone not to hesitate to correct me, so I can learn the language better. It never offends me, on the contrary, I welcome it. Sometimes, speaking Italian or English in a friendly environment, when I'm not sure about a word, I know I use the wrong one and hope someone will correct me, but everyone just pretends it's okay out of politeness.. Ehhh, humans and their pride...

The one that really gets me is when people use "I", thinking it makes them sound so educated, when it really and truly should be "me."

Hehe, just the other day i was thinking about this. Someone wrote on Facebook that people (Italians in this case) that write a caption to their photos, say, "Me and Sara" are wrong and it's supposed to be "Sara and I". I agree with putting Sara first, it would be more nice, but... In my opinion, this is the case when "I" would be an object, no? Like "This is the picture of [Sara and me]". Am I wrong?

 

[The Penguin]

Of course, I'm not speaking about those with dyslexia or other difficulties.

As long everyone on the same page with this, I don't have any issues at this point. I do get offended people don't consider people with difficulties as I'm one of those people fall in that area. Though I'm not the moderator of this site, if someone wrote something I consider offensive, I will speak. So far I haven't seen anyone that was outline.

 

[Ellylldan]

As long everyone on the same page with this, I don't have any issues at this point. I do get offended people don't consider people with difficulties as I'm one of those people fall in that area. Though I'm not the moderator of this site, if someone wrote something I consider offensive, I will speak. So far I haven't seen anyone that was outline.

Yes, this is an important point. And this is another reason why I'm trying hard not to correct people, even if I always feel the urge. Because I may not know why exactly person made a mistake. And this is the reason I'm doing my best not to judge people. How can I possibly know what they are going through?

(I was speaking about people I know well enough to know that they just don't care about knowing their language, I'm afraid I didn't make it clear enough before...)

I just hope I didn't offend you, Penguin.

 

[wyverary]

royinpink said pretty much everything I would have liked to have said. I will have to read that DFW piece. I remember George Orwell wrote a similar piece on political language; I'll see if I can dig it up (you can probably just Google it and it'll pop up).

 

[DogwoodTree]

Someone wrote on Facebook that people (Italians in this case) that write a caption to their photos, say, "Me and Sara" are wrong and it's supposed to be "Sara and I". I agree with putting Sara first, it would be more nice, but... In my opinion, this is the case when "I" would be an object, no? Like "This is the picture of [Sara and me]". Am I wrong?

No, you're correct. If you would say, "This is a picture of me", then putting in the other person doesn't change the first person pronoun: "This is a picture of Sara and me."

 

[royinpink]

royinpink said pretty much everything I would have liked to have said. I will have to read that DFW piece. I remember George Orwell wrote a similar piece on political language; I'll see if I can dig it up (you can probably just Google it and it'll pop up).

The Orwell piece is here.

A word of warning: the DFW piece may piss off some people who have a stake in the linguistic/political disagreements. But what linguistic position doesn't? At least he is explicit about his assumptions.

 

[AsheSkyler]

4) "I like Peter, Paul and Mary."- I prefer "Peter, Paul, and Mary". (There's a band called Peter Bjorn and John lol)

What particularly irks me about this one is that even college-level grammar books only use one comma. I think I have one book where I angrily stabbed commas into all the sentences missing them.

The rest don't bother me too much.

 

[Keith]

Speaking of Orwell, his 1984 depicts a society which tries to over time reduce the amount of words in the English language until they hope it'll only have one word for everything.

Considering how it took centuries to develop English into an artform, I find that idea doubleplus ungood.

 

[AsheSkyler]

Speaking of Orwell, his 1984 depicts a society which tries to over time reduce the amount of words in the English language until they hope it'll only have one word for everything.

Considering how it took centuries to develop English into an artform, I find that idea doubleplus ungood.

I shiver to think that even chatspeak was prophesied about.