Saturday, May 16, 2009

Strunk and White Rolling Over In Their Graves

What does one do after arriving home from a planned eighteen-mile run that became twenty because of a bad map? You relax on the couch with a book! I'm reading one in order to write a review for the Tri Club. The book's subject doesn't matter here; what I want to blog about are the frequent grammar and punctuation mistakes.

"Yoga Berra"?

"This simple displacement of his energy on an external goal, fame, undermining his ability to realize his potential."

These makes me go out of me mind.

8 comments:

Renee Thompson said...

Oh, I agree! And what makes me go out of ME mind are apostrophe's on menu's and/or storefront's advertising sale's and...okay, you get it. We go nuts together.

Michelle Panik said...

It wasn't a self-published book, either! It was put out by a Penguin imprint.

It's reassuring to know I'm not alone in this, Renee. Thanks.

kathrynlaw said...

I'll see your apostrophes and I'll raise you quotation marks. Ubiquitous quotation marks used for emphasis. In fact, there's a whole blog about them at unnecessaryquotes.com. The state of American literacy is sad, but it's not much better here in Italy!

Mom said...

It must be genetic! I got this in an email the other day and responded by nicely pointing out their misspelling:
A Blatent Attempt to Entice You with 25% Off

I try to help those who weren't blessed with the spelling/grammar/punctuation gene, though it sometimes seems a never ending task.

Anonymous said...

MOM, do I have to remind you it is, "Until Death due us part." Hmmmm, should those have been Capitolized?
DAD

Mom said...

No, sweetie, it's until death DO us part, no capitalization necessary, but you misspelled capitolized -- and I wasn't referring to you in my earlier post :-) It's you I signed on with to love, honor and spellcheck until death do us part. It's the rest of the world that makes me crazy sometimes!

Michelle Panik said...

I can't hide my satisfaction that a posting about grammar elicits so much discussion.

Anonymous said...

I knew you should have checked it but it was 4:15 am and I did not want to wake you.
Love
Me
PS sure it is not due? I know the "dew" is the wet stuff.

Shelly, are those quotes wrong too? GEESH will I every learn?????????????