Now my regular fans know well that I am not a word snob. I'm pretty laissez faire about the evolution of language, generally. I think the most useful grammatical rules of English should be followed, at least in printed form. Most people use the correct tense of the verb, and we usually align the proper pronoun with the singular or plural form. I'm not nitpicky about ending a sentence with a preposition, or when it is proper to use whom.
In the library the other day a I saw a sign on a carts of books, "Everything on this cart 50 cents." I was tempted to take everything on the cart and plunk down my half a buck , but I didn't want anything and I value my time too much to do it just to make a point, so I just scrawled the word "each" at the end of the sign. And perhaps un-necessarily replaced "Everything" with "Anything."
One sticky area is the increasing use of "they" instead of "his" or "her" as in: if anyone wants to join the club they should send in their application right away.
This is much less awkward that the correct grammatical usage and therefor I approve.
One rather jarring term used in popular media is "Baby Bump" to describe the abdomen of a pregnant celebrity. This just sounds wrong, crude and if I may be judgmental ignorant. I would rather use the ancient terms to describe pregnancy than to read and hear about baby mamas and baby bumps.
Another really annoying trend is the proliferation of the word Grab. Twice recently, I found the word grating on my ears. Once when the waitress asked if she could grab somethings. Can I grab you something to drink? No, just go and get us a coupla martini's honey. Or, maybe why don't you just grab this!
Perhaps this annoyance like so many other catch phrases was started by the slogan "Grab some Buds."
Which is mainly offensive in the suggestion that one would drink such insipid beer, but also suggests that one should get fist fulls of Buds and get sloshed. Lord knows where the grabbing could lead...some one could end up with a bump in the oven. Just sayin'
1 comment:
My language peeves of the moment? "Actually" and "basically."
Listen to any conversation anywhere these days and you actually hear both words used basically where they just are not needed. "Conversation extenders;" add a few modifiers to lengthen what you are saying and it must be more important, right? Fabulous!
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