- Eighty-five-year-old sniper still has it.
- Geez, this seems like the last thing anybody should be thinking about right now.
- Dumb criminal of the day. He does have a point, though. The lady might be armed. (Tip o’ hat to Rational Review News.)
- Once again, Massachusetts proudly leads the way. Eejits. (Tip o’ hat to S.)
- Slowly, the states begin to defy the Fed’s funny money. Yeah, this is just a token gesture. But still … (Tip o’ hat to MH.)
- This is a token gesture, too. But ya gotta love it. ObamaCare waivers. For everybody.
- Granted this conference took place before the Japanese earthquake but even if the whole world had been quiet and peaceful — and have you noticed much quiet and peace lately? — this would still show how juvenile the presidency has become. When Obama was running for office, we might have thought a lot of bad things about him. But did anybody guess his administration would turn out to be so trivial? Oh well, it’s better than seeking Glory in Empire. But … oops, we’re still doing that, too.
- BTW, to anybody wondering, I can pretty much second what Dave says about tsunami effects in his local area. It was less bad here. No dead or missing, and as far inland as I live, no damage. But there were evacuations and brief, minor chaos in nearby areas. Nothing worth mentioning compared to the disasters elsewhere. Still, in this part of the world, too, we know we’re vulnerable to a really big quake. So it’s a lesson. Glad to hear that the Duffy/Tuttle families are well and safe.
—–
Is it just me? Tell me if it is. But every once in a while, some perfectly respectable word or phrase will become habitually misused in a way that makes a language-lover’s skin crawl. For instance, using “like” where you mean “as.”. Or “less” when you mean “fewer.” Sometimes the misuse is a popular phenomenon. Sometimes, OTOH, it’s something the media picks up and suddenly every headline writer or anchorthing is misusing the same term because they imagine it makes them sound more erudite or in the know.
My current grammar gripe is a small thing. But again, it’s a usage that’s become ubiquitous in the media. It involves another very common, innocent word: after. Here’s a recent example of what bugs me: “[R]ifle found after police raid.” No, people. The rifle wasn’t found after the police raid. It was found during it.
Now in this instance you might say I’m being picky. If you count only the initial onrush as the “raid” and all the rest as mere follow-up, then yes, the rifle was found “after.” But this “after” business has become so universal that we’re also hearing things like (and these are examples from real news, though I don’t have the links in front of me): “Man dies after accident that decapitates him”; “Children disappear after father’s suicide;” “Fight turns violent after knife attack.”
After? Um … no, I don’t think so.
But tell me … is it only me? Am I being as prissy as a Victorian schoolmarm? Or are a bunch of morons really trying to make themselves sound somehow more cool by using the word “after” in ways that even the White Queen would find impossible to believe?
You’re being prissy as a Victorian schoolmarm, Claire.
Or would that be “like a Victorian schoolmarm?”
(mine is an evil laugh, but I can run away faster than you think.)
Ah, but I know where you live, Joel!
How about people who say “higher” when they mean “raise” or “increase”, such as “I’m going to higher the thermostat”.
Or people who, when they mean “Are you behaving”, say “Are you being have”. Arrrgh!
I had a gripe this week (about my newspaper column) that dealt with grammar. After I “shared” it on Facebook, the copy editor wrote me about my mention of the grammatical errors that were added after I submitted it. She said they could have me re-read my columns after they have done the editing, but I feel that is just asking me to do their job for them. I choose the words I use very carefully, and if they want to change something, they should at least make sure the resultant sentences make sense. (http://www.cnjonline.com/opinion/people-42355-fear-laws.html)
Oh, and regarding the newspaper column, they corrected some of the things I complained about in the online version, but it was too late for the paper version.
I believe, the grammar issues are the grammar (and spelling) issues are the result of twelve to sixteen years of a good public education where grade advancement, retaining funding, and union contracts are far more important than piddling issues like actual learning.
As to tracking chips on guns, I posted about that on the 7th and included contact info for Senator Petruccelli and the Senate President.
http://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/OliverDelSignore/2011/03/07/gun-grabber-escalates-the-assault-on-freedom/
“Higher the thermostat?” “Being have?” Egads. I haven’t run into either of those — and I hope I never do!
Damn shame about your recent editing experience, Kent. But ah feeel yr pain. I’ve generally been blessed with excellent editors, proofreaders, and copy editors. They regularly save me from myself. But I’ve had a few disasters. My worst: I wrote an annual report for a company. The designers decided to use the opening passages of my text as the cover art. But my opening didn’t contain exactly the words they thought would look best. So they changed them without saying anything to me. And in 42-point type on the cover of a glossy report, they created me one of those hair-tearing “like/as” errors.
We all goof sometimes. But some people who ought to know better seem to specialize in bad grammar.
Like what Oliver said, ya know? I’m still miffed at newsreaders who say ‘jew-ler-ry’ instead of jewelry, and ‘temp-a-chure’ instead of temperature (4 syllables)
“Like what Oliver said, ya know?”
LOL. Yep. And we can be glad GWB is no longer the president, because if he were, we’d be hearing all about the NUK-U-LAR plant in Japan right now.
And here’s another newsreader crazymaker: OFF-TEN. As in, “Newsreaders OFF-TEN mispronounce the word ‘often.'”
We could also get into their penchant for announcing “AN historical event.” But that would set off a grammatical firestorm, since there are advocates for both the “a” and “an” positions on that one. Still, at best it’s a snooty Britishism US newsies have adopted because they think it sounds more highfalutin’.
The one that irks me was popular a few years ago in the media (and is still heard occasionally): “Deja vu, all over again.” Redundant!
BTW, in the “85-year-old sniper” article, would somebody explain what the writer meant by “Despite a 66-year gap without using the gun, *he had no ease* (my emphasis) picking off a target at 300 yards, with all three shots hitting the target.”
No EASE — what does that mean? Did the author mean, “No trouble?”
Being a southerner, I just aint bothered by no misuse of the english language. I done got used to it by now.
Y’all, may be interested to know the banks are up to no good… again.
There is a reason why Cash will always be King.
They think if they limit Debit Cards, we’d go to Credit Cards or Charge Cards.
How about Cash?
http://gizmodo.com/#!5781321/banks-are-planning-to-cap-debit-card-purchases
Absolute worst misuse of the last few years: “begs the question” (and its variants).
Readers here likely know that this phrase means… to assume the truth of the propositon which is to be proved. This is a category of logical fallacy; begging the question DOES NOT mean imploring to be asked. Arrghh!
That is, begging the question did not used to mean crying out for query. However, these days, self-satisfied illiterates have pretty much transformed a useful phrase into a pompous emptiness.
Yes, you’re being as prissy as Obama at a school bullying symposium during a world changing earthquake.
EN — Thank heaven I’m not the president of the U.S., then!
Doug — Now I have to go back and make sure I never used the phrase that way. 🙂
Pat — I think “deja vu all over again” was intended as joke in the first place. I hope nobody has ever used it seriously. But who knows …
“deja vu all over again”
Is a direct quote from Yogi Berra. IIRC
{would that make it a Berraism ?}
And while I cannot prove it …. it appears as if Yogi was GW’s English tutor between GW’s binge drunks while hiding from the draft board using his Daddy’s money and political influence.
stay safe all,
gooch
Well, at least Yogi Berra was an original — and not dumb, in spite of his Berraisms. (Which is more than I can say for that other fellow you mentioned, gooch.)
Any intelligent lover of the English language nowadays is saddled with a panoply of peeves, I fear.
For instance, what’s up with “predominately” for when someone means predominantly?
Or “principle” to mean the principal amount of a loan?
Or “wallah” for voila?
Heh, I was beefing about this topic in a journal entry not long ago:
Listen, all you dumbasses out there: You don’t REIGN in something that’s out of control. You REIN it in. As in pulling back on a horse’s reins to slow it down. And when you do, you don’t say WOAH, you say WHOA. And if the horse doesn’t obey, you don’t LOOSE control of the animal, you LOSE control. Then you don’t WHINGE about “that stupid horse” to the stable groom, you WHINE about it.
Oy vey. I must be getting old and crabby…
[…] Out, Writer's Life by Beth Homicz — Leave a comment March 12, 2011 After commenting on a post by Claire just now, I thought, what the hey…this needs its own blog entry. Ladies and gentlemen, I give […]
*gasp* I knew this would happen eventually, a topic directly addressing my phobia – grammar (specifically: how incorrect mine is)……Paralyzing me every time I begin to say anything….*cringing*
A phobia stifling speech, so to speak….
By the way, Claire, I wanted you to know that I’ve started blogging again, and I integrated the old Freedom Outlaw blog stuff into my new site…hope you will come visit. Keeps Dropping Keys: http://bethhomicz.wordpress.com (sorry, I can’t seem to figure out how to put a link under my commenter name).
You know, naturegirl, it’s terribly sad is that a lot of people, like you, end up feeling afraid and ashamed of such a basic thing as talking or writing. You care, you want to do well, but you haven’t been taught how, so you keep mum.
Many times I felt the same way when I was studying foreign languages! I knew I couldn’t express everything properly and so I avoided people who could have been helpers and friends to me. I wish I had shown more courage and less self-consciousness.
And I hope I haven’t added to your phobia by what I’ve said here. If I have, I do apologize. I guess what I was railing against was people who don’t care about learning, about language, about the wonderful gift of human language and especially English.
Do you know how lucky we (I’m assuming here) are to be native English speakers? It’s one of the hardest languages on Earth to learn, with its endless rule-exceptions and the biggest vocabulary of any language. No matter how rough a talker you might think you are, millions of English-as-a-foreign-language students around the globe have ached to achieve the ability you already possess naturally.
The important thing is to care, and to risk being wrong or sounding silly now and then, and to keep trying…
naturegirl — I can tell by your comments that you have no terrible problem with grammar or any part of language. I’m sorry to have stumbled right into your phobia.
The truth is that all of us commit grammatical errors at times. I’ve made some whoppers myself. I’ve also been caught embarrassingly mispronouncing words (ones I’ve read, never heard, and have ASS-U-MEd are pronounced a certain way). And then there are those common punctuation and spelling errors — from which not one of us is immune.
There are only a few cases in which it’s really irritating. Most of those involve people who are trying to sound pretentious or are following a fad. Or people who are in a position to know better but don’t bother. For instance, it’s no big deal if somebody in a hurry types “their” instead of “there” or “they’re.” Or “it’s” when they mean “its.” It becomes a very big deal when somebody publishes a book full of those misconstructions or writes an opinion piece and expects it to be taken seriously. And it’s a very big deal when people in a position to influence others adopt awkward grammar or pretentious word use because they think it makes them sound smarter.
But you? I can’t see that you have anything to worry about.
Yay, Beth!!! Glad you’re blogging again. I noticed that the other day when you posted a link. Now I’m going to add you to my bookmarks and make Keeps Dropping Keys (great, strange name) a regular stop.
Certain accents or inflections can be mistaken for mispronunciations, so I try to ignore those. But I agree that proper written grammar is becoming rare thanks to “modern” public education.
The story on the WWII vet was awesome! Thanks for posting it. What an honor it must have been for the members of that group tow work with someone that did there job before all of the technology. And to make those shots at 1,000 years, awesome.
Aw, you both are to kind *sheepishly grinning as I hyperventilate* Thank You…
I am a product of the public school system – long before it became the mess it’s become lately, although inept teachers seem to be timeless….toss in over a decade of talking to rock fans on internet message boards (where ya have to sound cool more than correct) and this is the result….
(the dots: ….. are because I really think like that, all one run-on process LOL)
The spelling ones are easy (their, they’re), it’s the whole sentence structuring, word insertions and comma vs semi colon placing that causes the phobia to kick in…
But I know some people out there miss the message because the presentation annoys them, and that is how I “grew” this whole phobia thing….
One fact not mentioned in the “Sniper” piece is that Ted Gundy lost a leg in the Bulge.
If you ever get a chance to watch the episode of “Shooting USA” that was done on Ted do so. Anyone who is a veteran will not have a dry eye after seeing it. Kudos to Jim Scoutten (Shooting USA’s Host) and the USAMU.
As to grammar. One word misused repeatedly in the press is the term “Decimated”. As in, the population of (Insert latest catastrophy) was decimated by the tsunami/earthquake/etc.
Decimated is (or was) a punishment meted out to rebellious troops by the Romans, executing every tenth man in a unit as punishment. It does not mean a mass casualty event or even heavy losses in a military unit.
Literally it means only 10% casualties.
I will concede that the one big gripe I have is people who use ‘big’ words when the don’t know the meaning. I know a guy who uses the word ‘penultimate’ as if it were an adjective like “awesome” or “outstaning”. And he uses it all the damn time… “This is a penultimate burger! Did you see the rack on that waitress? Penultimate!”
I would correct him but it’s pretty funny.
Hi Claire,
The one I am most often bothered by is when someone says
“I could care less” … If they say it to me in person, I always respond
with “Well, why don’t you”? This usually causes a blank stare or no response at all! I feel that when people are this lazy, it indicates that
much of the time they really are not composing their speech as much as
parroting and regurgitating what they have heard others say. If it was otherwise, they would immediately notice the misuse of their words!
I wish that I couldn’t care less, but I do!
My writing has become sloppy since the advent of the Internet. In the early days it was assumed (by me) that comment sections purpose was to point out the writing errors of others. At some point it dawned on me that most people write how they talk so I’ve taken to listening. I’ve heard a lot.
Yesterday an email needed writing to an ex on a painful subject. For some reason this thread was floating around in the vast emptiness of my mind and making it perfect seemed important. It proved to be a great diversion for getting through the unpleasantness. This morning a response came back and it said, “Did your new girlfriend write this?” There is no “new Girl friend BTW.
“much of the time they really are not composing their speech as much as parroting and regurgitating what they have heard others say.”
– Add to that: the various regional slang-uages that are almost like a foreign language to the rest of the country…..it’s considered “normal”/correct for that area even if it’s technically incorrect….
I stumbled over learnt/learned the other day……”learnt” reminds me of my one-side-of-relatives in West Virginia (not that there’s anything wrong with the relatives or the state, they just talk funny from a Chicago girl’s perspective) – – it sounds like a word the redneck-riverbillies would use…..I guess I will continue to use “learned” in the wrong places now that I’ve made that connection…..
Ah… but naturegirl, “learnt” (and many other words and spellings) is perfectly acceptable in Great Britain, it’s the difference in the way they write and talk. So tell them you’re from England. 🙂
Given the state of modern law enforcement, the rifle in question could of easily been found after the raid. Might of been forgotten by one of the LEO, might of been a plant in order to “improve” charges agains the victim of the raid etc.
My town had a major gang shoot-out several years ago. Police never got involved during the action BTW. Several guns were found after the shoot out, in bushes, behind planters etc.
Pat — Good point about words like “learnt.” It’s also true that people from the most “primitive” parts of the U.S. are speaking language that’s still highly influenced from the British regions their ancestors migrated from.
My mom was a hillbilly. As a kid I didn’t notice her accent (which was moderated by her years in other parts of the country and by her ardent desire not to sound like a hick from the sticks). Only when a more aware friend pointed out that Mom “talked funny” did I start paying attention. It wasn’t only a matter of accent. She occasionally used words/expressions like “sprag” and “redd up” that sound strange to modern ears but have pretty old roots.
“Sprag” I don’t know, but “redd up” is a familiar term. I once had a roommate from northern PA whose parents (both sides) were German, and they all used the phrase consistently, along with other German families in the area. As did the Amish around York and Lancaster, PA, and a few Mennonites I knew in Delaware, as well.
http://azstarnet.com/article_011e7118-8951-5206-a878-39bfbc9dc89d.html
Obama issues his first actual statement (Well, by his standards) on the gun issue and it pretty much just gets a nice round of guffaws from us in the pro-2A crowd.
Back when he first got elected, I would not have seen that coming. Overall a positive development. It’s actually looking likely that he’ll be shown the door after this term…
Pat – I think my Chicago accent (which I swear I don’t have LOL) might not convince anyone I’m from across the pond…..
Accents are easy to deal with – “I don’t have an accent, YOU do!”…..
Not only do some words/expressions apply regionally, but they seem to pop up or disappear like fads too…..
I think I have a new defense comment when I get grammar-arrested: But it’s correct where I come from!!!!!….hehe