Rosemary Cole's Blog: The Sweet Torture of Writing - Posts Tagged "writing"

Having spent some years doing various types of editing, I find that I'm far more distracted by grammar goofs than I used to be. Or could it be that writing and grammar has gotten worse recently? In any case, it's getting to me so much that I've decided to write a series of short blog posts featuring the writing errors I see every day. I spot them in books, advertising, letters, and articles published by teachers and other professionals. These are grammar no-nos that really bug me. Do you do this?

GRAMMAR PEEVE #1: Using an apostrophe with a plural noun. NO! Apostrophes are used with possessive nouns, not plurals.
WRONG: I have ten new follower's on Twitter.
Correct: I have ten new followers on Twitter.
Correct: My new follower's name is April. (singular possessive)
Correct: My followers' preference is science fiction. (plural possessive)

Thanks for letting me rant about my pet peeve!

Have you ever noticed a flock of birds flying, or a school of fish swimming? They all seem to change direction simultaneously, even though you didn't hear one of them call out, "Okay, guys, left on three!" Yet they do it with such perfect coordination that not one wingtip (or fin) bumps another. Somehow they all just know.

This seems to be the way our language behaves, as well. It's as if there was some huge, secret conference at which everyone decided that we would start using certain words or phrases in a certain way. But there was no conference. Somehow, everybody just started doing it a new way.

Problem is, "everybody" doesn't seem to know the new way is wrong.

This brings me to my next grammar peeve, which is one of these sea changes that just happened in the last few years.

"People that don't know about this don't know grammar."

WRONG!!!

It's "People WHO don't know about this..."

There are two basic types of relative pronouns. The first type (that, which) refers to THINGS.

The car THAT is the fastest will win.

The other type refers to people.

The runner WHO is fastest will win.

When did people suddenly become things? Because everywhere, constantly, I see THAT used to refer to a person. I even see it used like this: "The person that..." when it should be "The person who..."

Take these famous quotes:

He who dares, wins.
He who laughs last, laughs best.

Imagine them with "that" instead of "who." Doesn't work too well, does it?

Or even from Harry Potter: He Who Must Not Be Named.

Wouldn't it sound silly as He That Must Not Be Named?

It's the same thing with using "lay" instead of "lie." Suddenly everyone, including the writers of a medical health pamphlet that I came across, is using lay instead of lie. To quote a popular song:

If I lay here (should be lie)
If I just lay here (wrong again)
Will you lie with me and just forget the world (got it right that time, mate)

Well, I feel better now that I've gotten that grammar peeve off my chest. Thanks for listening!

Rosemary