When constructing a sentence, it’s important to pay attention to proper spelling and punctuation. Take the simple declarative sentence, “Let’s eat, Grandma!” Oh, what a profound difference a missing comma can make. And that’s the point of today’s rant. The next time I hear someone say, “It may be a blessing in the skies,” I just might lose it. No! It’s “a blessing in disguise.” The only blessing in the skies is that your middle school English teacher isn’t alive to hear you say that. We need to talk. Actually, I need to talk. You need to listen.
Sometimes I worry about our educational system. Actually, scratch that – I lie awake in a cold sweat panic about it. Every day, I browse social media or read emails where someone has catastrophically misspelled a commonly used word, completely butchered a classic truism, or otherwise treated English grammer like a rental car – which, by the way, is spelled grammar. I threw that in there to see if your eyes would gloss right over it like a golden retriever blankly staring at a calculus textbook.
My theory is that about thirty percent of Americans slept through middle school English, or spent that time practicing spitball trajectories, doodling heavy metal band logos, or seeing how long they could balance a ruler on their upper lip. (And by the way, it’s slept, not slepped.)
Recently a guy wrote to me that he’s traveling to Antarctica next Febuary. I told him, “No, you’re not.” Because there isn’t any month named Febuary in the Gregorian calendar. There are two R’s in February. Apparently one of them entered the Federal Witness Protection Program sometime during the Reagan Administration and has never been heard from since.
Likewise, you can’t order an expresso at Starbucks. Well… technically you can. But be prepared for the 19-year-old barista who actually knows the proper pronunciation of the word espresso to give you a judgmental (not judgemental) look.
I realize that you probably take for granite that you’ve mastered your mother tongue. But have you really? If so, how is it that you didn’t even notice that my use of “take for granite” should have read “take for granted”? Unless you are a geologist discussing a countertop, you need to pay closer attention.
Then there’s the person who proudly announces, “Me and Larry saw the funniest movie.” Nope. “Larry and I” did. “Me” is an object. You know… like the grammar textbook you apparently used as a pillow during class. While we’re reviewing elementary school material, you mispelled “misspelled.” And “cat” is still spelled C-A-T. I checked. Nothing has changed.
I realize that, for all intensive purposes, I’m probably talking to a brick wall. A wall that didn’t even blink at the fact that the phrase is actually “for all intents and purposes.”
Last week someone told me her seven-year-old son had told a bold-faced lie. Unless he somehow lied in 18-point Helvetica Black, the word she was looking for was bald-faced. As in bare, naked, and completely uncovered. Like her lack of vocabulary. Leave typography out of this.
And for the record… It is not a doggy-dog world. It’s dog-eat-dog. Nobody wants you to be their escape goat. A scapegoat is a sacrificial lamb of blame; an escape goat is just a farm animal that figured out how to unlatch the pasture gate. And please don’t nip it in the butt. That sounds less like good advice and more like a criminal charge. The expression is nip it in the bud.
Your 9th grade English teacher probably did not tell you your essay passed mustard. Unless she was grading hot dogs. It’s passed muster. One belongs in a sentence. The other belongs on a bratwurst.
Then there are my personal favorites. You don’t loose your wallet. You lose your wallet. Loose is how your pants fit after six months on Ozempic. You’re not balling your eyes out. Unless you’re draining three-pointers while sobbing uncontrollably, you’re bawling. You don’t wait with baited breath unless someone has attached worms to your face. You wait with bated breath.
And if you’re weary of your neighbor’s barking dog, that’s because you’re tired of hearing it. If you’re wary of your neighbor, it’s because he owns seventeen lawn gnomes and keeps inviting you to cryptocurrency seminars. There’s a difference.
And while we’re cleaning house… It’s could have. Not could of. Somewhere along the line, “could’ve” got mugged in a dark alley and woke up as “could of.”
A word about the annoying overuse of apostrophes… If you’re selling three tomato’s for a dollar, your vegetables don’t own anything. They don’t need an apostrophe. Neither do DVD’s, taco’s, banana’s, or emoji’s. Stop sprinkling apostrophes around like you’re seasoning French fries.
Then come the championship contenders… The people who confuse your and you’re. Or there, their, and they’re. Every time I see someone write, “Your an idiot,” a tiny part of my soul packs its bags and moves to Canada.
And don’t even get me started on people who end every sentence with three exclamation points!!! One exclamation point says you’re excited. Three says you’ve just spotted Bigfoot riding a unicycle while being chased by Elvis. Use them sparingly. Please!!!
Now, I realize I may sound like an insufferable know-it-all. That’s fair. I’ve earned it. Some of you are probably grinding your teeth right now while muttering, “I could care less what this pretentious jerk thinks” – that’s, of course, assuming you knew the meaning of the word pretentious.
Once again…your, er, I mean, you’re wrong. It’s I couldn’t care less. If you could care less, then you still care at least a little – which, frankly, gives me hope. Because maybe – just maybe – you’ll remember one thing from this column. Probably not.
But perhaps, somewhere out there, someone who was about to order an expresso in Febuary while telling his friend that he had passed mustard will pause, take a deep breath … and decide to remain silent.
If this article saves just one innocent apostrophe from a life of abuse, prevents one escape goat from being dragged into another clichéd conversation about this doggy-dog world, or keeps one unsuspecting flower from being nipped in the butt…well, then my work here is done. To be honest, I really could care less.
In the meantime, go open a dictionary.
That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.
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