One of my absolute biggest pet peeves is abuse...
...of syntax.
As a writer/editor/reader/copy editor, it physically pains me to see the abuse of written language. Run-on sentences look like chain gang prisoners, wayward semicolons are like lost children, and misspelled words are the sad eyes of caged animals who are looking into my soul and beckoning for my help. I see every single one of them, and I want to help them all.
Do you not understand that I am effectively affected with every misused word?
Are you not aware when your participles are dangling?
Did no one teach you that semicolons are not confetti for you to sprinkle all over your sentences just to make them look pretty?
I believe that possessives and contractions are definitely the most misunderstood species of the grammatical kingdom. Oftentimes mistaken for their contraction counterparts, all the yours, itses, and theirs have been used to exhaustion; meanwhile the you'res, it'ses, and they'res have nearly reached extinction. If only people realized that they needed verbs, then this would not even be a problem. The only way to solve this lexical dilemma would be to completely expunge the apostrophe. However...
That would just cause too many problems for us lazy speakers of English. Infatuated with the apostrophe, we use it as a shortcut in our possessives. Why would we want to beat around the proverbial bush when we could just get to the point by taking the backward, apostrophe-facilitated shortcut?
Tim's grandmother's brooch is expensive.
The brooch of the grandmother of Tim...
No. We love our apostrophe too much to sacrifice it, regardless of the clarity it would bring to the use of our possessives. We are fueled by our lazy vernacular--we keep the apostrophe and all the confusion that comes with it, because nobody has time for all that verbosity. Anyway, the problem would not end with the apostrophe being eliminated: prepositional problems would surely ensue...
That would just cause too many problems for us lazy speakers of English. Infatuated with the apostrophe, we use it as a shortcut in our possessives. Why would we want to beat around the proverbial bush when we could just get to the point by taking the backward, apostrophe-facilitated shortcut?
Tim's grandmother's brooch is expensive.
The brooch of the grandmother of Tim...
No. We love our apostrophe too much to sacrifice it, regardless of the clarity it would bring to the use of our possessives. We are fueled by our lazy vernacular--we keep the apostrophe and all the confusion that comes with it, because nobody has time for all that verbosity. Anyway, the problem would not end with the apostrophe being eliminated: prepositional problems would surely ensue...
The number of human beings who think that "of" is a verb is really frightening. "Should of," "could of," and "would of"--oftentimes followed by "did"--are three of the most cringe-worthy word combinations I have ever had the displeasure of reading. I do not know when we began forgetting (or neglecting!) that every statement needs at least one verb, but apparently there has been a colossal anti-verb propaganda campaign sponsored by the word "of" that is keeping us from writing full sentences. I am going to take us back many, many moons and remind everyone that sentences without action cannot exist. We need verbs, because verbs are our action words. This is our new mantra, so say it with me: verbs are action words. Soothing, is it not?
Okay, okay. Maybe it is just me, but there really is a lot of satisfaction that comes from fixing all these little errors. It is like I am digging for gold--every error I find is like a big, shiny nugget. While you might not understand why editing does this for me, I am sure that you have something that gives you that same triumphant feeling.
Everyone has his own cause. This is mine. It is a rough life to compulsively feel the need to fix other people's grammatical problems. I bear the cross of the Intellectual Snob and have been branded as a member of the pretentious "Who/Whom" Police. The road to grammatical perfection is never-ending, but I travel it proudly and bravely (of course armed with my Col-E pencils).
But I feel like I am forgetting something here...
Oh yes. I am forgetting a huge thanks to all the grammar perps out there. I would not be able to do what I love to do if there were not so many people who have problems with spelling, punctuation, subject-verb agreement, and parallelism. So, I want to give my wholehearted gratitude to everyone who makes blunders--both big and small--because, without you, both my degree and my passion would be completely obsolete. You all inspire (and infuriate) me. So, thank you.Y
This should be read by the world. Especially teenagers around the United States.
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