I'm not going to say what book the two sentence I am posting this week came from because I generally like the author's work and I've chosen these two sentences because they illustrate something that drives me right off the deep end.
He'd acted in haste, perhaps. A haste he may later regret.
Not may. Might. It should be might. I started seeing this error crop up, oh, maybe six months to a year ago. And it's out there a lot. As if it's an editorial choice rather than a simple grammatical error.
Back when I was in high school, my English teacher had a sign on her office that said "Abandon 'hopefully' all ye who enter here." It was a peeve she passed along to me, so I pass along the appropriate check. If you can use the three words "full of hope," the single word "hopefully" is being used correctly. If you can't, it's not. "Full of hope, the pitcher awaited the umpire's call." Yep. "Full of hope, the Sox make it to the Series." Nope. I don't mind it in conversation, or even on blogs, but when I see it in print media it drives me crazy.
Now, my grammar isn't perfect. And my spelling's atrocious. And I am just bleeding awful when it comes to understanding where commas go. (In fact, I was told once in high school not to bother using them because it took a lot less red ink for my teacher to add then where they were needed than to circle all the ones I'd put in unnecessarily, so now I don't use nearly enough!) So you'd think, with all those flaws, that I could cut other people a break. But I can't help it. When it comes to plunking down my money for a published book, I expect the grammar and usage to be right (except for stylistic choices), even if the occasional typo slides beneath the radar.
So tell me, dear readers, what are your pet peeves? What will yank you straight out of a narrative?
Oh, and the two sentences I wrote this week?
But the man didn’t seem to be expecting trouble. He’d had time to grow bored, to tell himself his employer was overreacting to some threat.
Give us your two cents, your two sentences! If you post them on your blog, let us know in the comments and we'll put a link here in the post.
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15 comments:
That May/Might one also drives me nuts, and I've been seeing it so much lately that I question my own grammatical sanity. I'd never heard that full of hope tip. Hopefully, I'll remember it :)
Lately, I've also noticed people using the contraction That's without regard to the singular tense it represents, such as, "That's the challenges ahead." Many people may be using These Are correctly, but I'm only noticing all the weird, inappropriate That'ses creeping in. Do you think that could be the plural form of That's? "My fellow citizens, That'ses the many problems we confront." I'll start using it and report back.
For the season, I'm reading a collection of ghost stories by Sheridan Le Fanu. (These authors and their mile-long sentences. They must've been paid by the semi-colon!) From 1872's Dickon the Devil:
"Then, queer stories, little by little, began to be told. It was said, first by one, then by another, that Squire Bowes was seen, about evening time, walking, just as he used to do when he was alive, among the old trees, leaning on his stick; and, sometimes when he came up with the cattle, he would stop and lay his hand kindly like on the back of one of them; and that one was sure to fall sick next day, and die soon after."
My three (since two are fragments anyway):
"Judge Marbury assigned you to me as part of your sentence for driving under the influence. Dumb ass move, by the way. Both yours and his."
Arggg...I haven't seen the "that's", and it's precisely the kind of thing that makes me crazy so I hope I don't!
One of my pet peeves is "I" vs "me." And it's amazing how much it happens in tv shows, which is only going to reinforce it in the minds of people.
For example: "Are you going to the movies with Henry and I?"
I was always taught that if you just dropped the other word (for instance, Henry), and it didn't work then it wasn't the right pronoun "Are you going to the movies with I?" I don't think so!
The other one is the possessive apostrophe. I've seen so many signs that use this incorrectly - and for the life of me I can't come up with one right now, because I literally can't think of how to use it wrong! Its and it's are always interchanged as well.
Gourmet -
I was taught that same way of distinguishing between the use of "me" and "I." I was also taught that to try "us" for "me" and "we" for "I".
The possessive apostrophe...oy! It's a disaster! I used to live down the street from a billboard advertising "ABC Vacuum's." It was up the many years I lived in that house. Imagine paying a fortune for advertising your own stupidity?
There's a whole blog devoted to apostrophe catastrophes at http://apostrophecatastrophes.blogspot.com/
(NB Clare--today's post on apostrophecatastrophes should please you.)
That's a great site and a great post! The author has more intestinal fortitude than I.
Garsh, I'se so wif all of youse on the grammatical errors...
My personal pet peeve is 'then' and 'than'. Like Clare, I'm starting to question my own grammatical sanity (loved that line, Clare!)
And the Bag Lady is by no means perfect (she's also guilty of too many commas, and the occasional possessive error), but geez, Louise, some of the errors she has seen on blogs that are purportedly written by TEACHERS just blow her away!
Great two sentence post, too, by the way, Laura!
Bag Lady -
Oh, yeah..."he was so much uglier then anyone else"...I just saw that somewhere the other day. Drives me nuts!
Incorrect use of plural possessives drives me nuts, but I've given up. I live on Kings Ridge Rd. Are there many kings? (I like to think so.) If so, it should be Kings' Ridge. If the road belongs to a single king it should be King's Ridge. Leave it to a staff member at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center, to whom I gave my address, to ask which it should be. They get mightily annoyed when writers' usage of their center's name is incorrect. (I'm getting dizzy. I hope I've made sense here.) Oh yeah, "we went to visit the Smith's" is equally annoying, as it should be "we went to visit them Smiths". Ya know?
That possessive problem is always sand in my eye, too, Lois
And it's "them Smiths, over by 'dere" in parts of Chicago!
Lois Karlin I hear you and agree it is extremely annoying.
Lois -
I'd forgotten the surname pluralities. That also makes me nuts! What can I say...I really am a grammar curmudgeon.
People have become lazy since the introduction of spell & grammar checkers. Do they even teach grammar in school these days?
Reb-
I don't know. I do know that I never *really* learned grammar (the why, not just the memorized rules) until I learned Latin. Lots of things, like the "lie/lay" conundrum, became much clearer to me once I had an appropriate language to talk about them.
My grammar is horrible so thanks for the tips.
I'm going to try and get a Two Line Thursday up today since I failed to get a post up Tuesday as planned.
My life has been hectic and today I can't get blogger to cooperate.
And thanks for taking part in DonorChoose over on my blog.
Oops, I didn't realize until just now that I was supposed to use the page that credited you! I just used the DonorsChoose link instead. *sigh*
And any time you want a grammarian nit-picker to proof something, you just come right on over.
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