Sometimes even the experts simply have it wrong. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m staring at a dozen grammar and style books trying to locate some of the most common errors people commit in writing and speech.<\/p>\n
We concede that because people speak about 10 times faster than they write, the ear tunes out some \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but not all \u00e2\u20ac\u201d of the errors we hear. Because we have more time to read things, we can be more critical of errors in print.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
Now that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve turned 70, my short-term memory is not what it used to be. In fact, my short-term memory is not what it used to be. We often hear locutions like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They gave the award to she and I.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
She and I? Hardly. They gave the award to her and me. Because such a sentence is fairly common, I checked some sources, trying to find an explanation. The first source, a yellowed, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s-era newspaper stylebook, explained that people often use the wrong pronoun in feigning snobbishness. According to the editors of the stylebook, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153she and I\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sounds more high-falutin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153her and me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s used that way.<\/p>\n
Here, the experts simply got it wrong. There is nothing inherently more high-brow about using she for her and I for me. The problem lies simply in short memory. By the time we get to the object, the receiver of the action, we forget how the sentence started and we simply don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember to use the objective case and revert back to the nominative.<\/p>\n
For simplicity, the nominative case of the pronoun, she or I, usually goes at the beginning of the sentence, and the objective case, her or me, generally goes at the end.<\/p>\n
We would never say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They gave the award to she.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when we have more than one element, and an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that we get into trouble. So, between you and I \u00e2\u20ac\u201d er, me\u00e2\u20ac\u201d high-blown prose or not, them did not give the award to I.<\/p>\n
Forgetting how we started our sentences reminds me of a quotation by Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680): \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Can a fact exist in the future or a promise exist in the past? Notice how frequently the mis-placement of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153promise\u00e2\u20ac\u009d occurs. A music video features a host of fast-food workers asking the customers for napkins. One of the lines is: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153May I have a napkin, please? I promise I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not hurting any trees.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
A promise is an assurance one will do something in the future, as in, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I promise to behave from now on.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Clearly, the music crew means to say it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hurt trees (in the future), but what if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been cavalier in the past? What if one of them wasted many napkins, grievously offending Mother Nature? How else can a person get the meaning across?<\/p>\n
We hear people say, regarding something in the recent past, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I promise I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go over the speed limit.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That may well be, and despite the obvious grammatical error, we wonder how else one can assure another of such rectitude. One could say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Honestly, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t speed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I swear I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really put the pedal to the metal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear those usages too often. Is it because people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like to swear?<\/p>\n
Even the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, gives a past tense slant to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153promise\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when its instructions for submissions include the following admonition: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Yes, we promise.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
A notice that appears often in the Optic, before we edit it, concerns the fact that for a particular event, seating is limited and therefore it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on a first-come, first-serve basis.<\/p>\n
I asked my colleagues why people write \u00e2\u20ac\u0153serve\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153served\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (as in dinner is served, not serve). Our consensus is that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult to complete the thought without using \u00e2\u20ac\u0153basis.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So, if the basis is that the first to arrive are the first ones tended to, people simply won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear the d in served, as its sound gets assimilated by the b in basis.<\/p>\n
We see particular letters elided, particularly in home-painted restaurant signs and menus, as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ice tea,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when the drink should be iced. The first letter in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tea\u00e2\u20ac\u009d often drowns out the d in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153iced.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
As a language cop, I hoped to find millions of Internet \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hits\u00e2\u20ac\u009d defending my stance that it should be iced tea and not ice tea, Well, it seems that just as many sources are willing to let \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d just slide by. The drink tastes the same regardless of how it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spelled.<\/p>\n
So what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next? Are we to accept cell phone texting as standard? R U ready 4 such a travesty?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes even the experts simply have it wrong. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m staring at a dozen grammar and style books trying to locate some of the most common errors people commit in writing and speech. We concede that because people speak about 10 times faster than they write, the ear tunes out some \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but not all \u00e2\u20ac\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}