Tag: grammar

grammar gripes: people are LITERALLY ruining the English language

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My government teacher in high school, Mr. Madden, used to drive me crazy with the word literally. He would pronounce it litally. “You LITALLY don’t know anything about the Constitution!” Like he had a Southern drawl and was a good ol’ boy. Except he wasn’t. He went to Miami and I’m sure he grew up in Ohio.

I’m also confident he did not use literally correctly at least 75% of the time, and I’d like to take this opportunity to blame him for my generation’s corruption of this word and subsequent redefining.

Now, in case we have not been properly introduced, hello, my name is Meaghan and I am a prescriptivist. For the most part. (What’s funny about this is prescriptivist isn’t a fully accepted word yet. Ha!) I openly admit it. I am a grammar snob and I judge people. I’m probably judging you right now. The other part of my confession is, I don’t know everything. I’m certain I say/write things incorrectly too. I try to restrict my snobbery to things I expect you learned if you grew up in America and graduated from high school.

But one of my big pet peeves is how obsessed people have become with using literally in a completely inaccurate sense. I know I’m not alone. The Oatmeal’s description of literally is the best.

And recently, a very sad thing happened. The OED caved to all you abusers of the English language! Now, I first heard that Google changed its meaning of the word literally to include the completely inaccurate, ass-backwards way of using literally to “express strong feeling while not being literally true”. And I thought to myself, “Google can’t just CHANGE THE MEANING OF A WORD. They aren’t the OED.” And then I found this post about the OED. They changed their definition too!!

And I put my head down on my desk and cried. Not really, but I thought about.

People talk about Mark Twain and Chaucer using literally in this alternate sense, but I have chosen not to accept these arguments as motivation to change the meaning of the word. If you haven’t looked it up yet, the first (and only true, IMO) meaning of literally is “in a literal sense; exactly”. As in, in actuality. When people use it in the other (wrong) way, they don’t, in fact, mean anything literally at all!

So I say, you can take your false meaning of literally and LITERALLY shove it up your ass.

Whoops. Sorry. I guess what’s done is done. I know there’s a pretty interesting history of words’ meanings changing over time. (Check out this list from Slate.) But don’t expect to hear me concede on this soon.

it’s time for a grammar lesson.

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Okay. Here’s the thing. I know plenty of other blogs and websites have grammar posts that are better than this will be, but I don’t really care. If you do, then head over to Slate or some other place.

My love for proper grammar (and subsequent snobbery) has been heightened recently by my new job. See, I have this 70 page style guide that I basically need to memorize in order to do my job well. (That sentence would have been critiqued and edited for numerous reasons.) Fortunately, a lot of it is English grammar that I already know because I went to elementary school. But the rest is stylized and specific to both the type of writing I’m doing and the company. In any case, reading through the guide multiple times has led me here. To the grammar rant. Let us begin.

1. There is one, I repeat, ONE e in the word judgment.

2. There is no a in the word definitely.

3. Repeat after me: people who, things that. Please stop saying people that. We are not things.

4. Its is possessive. It’s is a contraction meaning it is or it has, as in, It’s disturbing to me how often apostrophes are abused.

5. To follow suit, your is possessive. You’re is a contraction meaning you are.

6. Adverbs modify verbs (crazy, right?). Use them. They feel neglected. They want to be your friend.

7. CD’s is possessive. CDs is plural. CDs’ is plural possessive.

8. Penultimate means next to last. It does not mean more ultimate than ultimate, or some variation of that.

9. Proud vs. prideful. I realize that prideful is actually a word. However, I still don’t like it. We already have the word proud. Maybe it’s just because I spend too much time with church-folk, and they really like saying prideful. (Sidebar: I could probably write an additional post on misused and made up words in the church. Quick example: the word gospel is a noun. It is not a verb. You cannot gospel someone.)

10. A semicolon (;) connects two independent clauses that are related. An independent clause is a phrase that can stand on its own (AKA a complete sentence). Now promise me you’ll stop putting semicolons wherever you feel like. Or maybe you better just promise to stop using them altogether.

11. Acrossed is not a word. Neither is acrost.

12. Quotation marks. I’m not even sure how to explain the improper use of quotation marks, so I’m going to employ a photo, which I took in the bathroom of one of my old haunts (feel free to admire my tanned shoulder). For everyone’s sake, if you’re making a sign, just play it safe and don’t put any quotes on it.

13. Less vs. fewer. Now, this is one that I’m not especially picky about, but I know plenty of people who are. The rule is use fewer when referring to people or things. Note the s on the end of thing. Use less when referring to something that cannot be counted, or cannot be plural. Less is also generally used with numbers. So you would say: I need less ice. I need fewer ice cubes. I need less than seven.

I’m going to reserve the right to add to this list. Please share your grammar pet peeves!

And now you are all welcome to critique my writing. But be nice.