Thursday, October 25, 2012

Celebrating grammar snobbery

I know how it is.  You dashed off a Facebook post about something that really irritated you. Then you come back a few hours later to find that some jerk has corrected your grammar or spelling. “It was a typo,” you want to scream, but they can’t hear you over their smug self-satisfaction.

Well, I have something to admit. My name is Sabrina, and I’m a grammar snob. I correct ‘who’ to ‘whom’ among other irritating things.

It’s a sad thing to admit. No one likes a self-righteous grammar snob, or  a spelling snob, or a fact snob. But the way I see it, we grammar snobs must take it upon ourselves to integrate with the rest of society.

As for Facebook, or Twitter? Leave social media alone.  People barely bother to proof read their resumes, let alone their tweets.  If we grammar snobs wish to get our message across, stalking Facebook is not the way to do it.

It’s a cold, lonely Internet out there. But take heart! Weird Al is on our side:



THIS ONE HAS ALWAYS BOTHERED ME:

Also, I’ve found a fun new resource for all my fellow grammar snobs: the online version of the Common Errors in English Usage book. .Because as long as we’re snobby, we’d better be sure we’re right. I, for one, have trouble with ‘that’ and ‘which.’

What's even more interesting, in my opinion, are the non-errors. I'm especially happy to learn I can end a sentence with a preposition if I want to.

:)

So go forth, armed with this new knowledge, unashamed of your grammar prowess!

And while you’re at it, might as well add to your overall knowledge skills. I’m a big fan of the Wikipedia List of Common Misconceptions.



Note: my dinner guests stayed later than I expected, and I'm dead tired and have no time to proofread. So here's hoping I didn't make TOO many grammar errors. But isn't that just how it works?

3 comments:

  1. LOL, I confess I'm not a grammar snob, but I feel that is a bad thing to admit for an aspiring writer. I do think grammar is important, but I don't have that eye to catch grammar mistakes. I have to read my stuff backwards sentence by sentence when I proof read. It is the only way my mind doesn't automatically fix the mistakes.

    I love those Weird Al clips. Hilarious.

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  2. I love those Weird Al clips. I tried to find more, but that's all I could see. I'm not a huge grammar nazi, but there are a few things that really bug me. Unfortunately, I catch myself doing them once in a while, so I don't feel like I can call other people out on it.

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  3. I love Weird Al - grammar, not so much. It's a good thing to have grammar snobs in the world to help the rest of us :)

    Great post!

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