Wednesday, March 4, 2009

National Grammar Day

I just learned that today, March 4, is National Grammar Day.

I overuse commas, ellipses, and dashes. These errors I know about (along with prepositional sins), but wonder what else I miss that just makes my friends cringe. I don't quite wonder enough to ask. I cringe at the misuse of apostrophes, or as they are often misused, apostrophe's. What grammar errors bug you most? If it is one of mine, I'll try to watch it.

Jasper Fforde has written a series of alternate-history novels that feature time travel, literary allusions and illusions, grammasites, mispeling vyruses, and many other entertaining beasties. The books are so much fun that I lost a lot of sleep over them. I would have enjoyed them even more if I had a better knowledge of English literature. I have read all the Thursday Next series, but have not yet started the Nursery Crimes series. I laughed often while reading these, but wonder how much just - whoosh! - went over my head. (There: I just got credit for misuse of dash AND overuse of exclaimation point.)


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am most intolerant of that which I am most prone to do. The advent of the semicolon has allowed me to create run-on sentences that would take your breath away. Naturally, I hate run-on sentences.

I am in good company, though; the Apostle Paul wrote some great run-ons.

What's happening down there on Earth today?

P.B.

K-Sue said...

It's Art Day at this house. Pictures later.

Anonymous said...

I'm not that critical about punctuation, but I can't stand poor spelling. In my days B.C. (before children) when I published a couple of science articles, I had to learn about how not to end a sentence with a preposition. It was a hard lesson to learn, but clearly not one that the writers of our local paper ever learned. Boy-I'm mean today, aren't I? Sorry!

See you soon!

crispy said...

I am horrible at spelling, grammar and punctuation. Good thing I teach my kids. =)

And my over use of anything is ...

I use it all the time ...

It is my way of showing that I am thinking ...

Anonymous said...

Here's a classic for Science Geek.
"Hey Mom, what did you bring the book that I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"
P.B.

Unknown said...

I have alot of grace for poor spellers. I mean, they have their strengths, spelling and punctuation just isn't one of them. I am a strong speller and love grammar and "stuff" but I also am a TERRIBLE proof reader, as in I just DON'T do it. So then later I go back and see that I have typed its as it's in my haste, or put a possesive apostrophe where it isn't merited or, horror of horrors actually typed in a homonym in place of the word I was going for. I blame it on my typing speed, and my fingers getting ahead of my brain, and not being able to multi-task well... and it's not rare for me to be TALKING while I'm posting, or at least being spoken to. We do have 7 people in this house after all, pretty impossible to have a silent moment.

What a fun corner of the blogosphere you have here, I love homeschooling!! And I'm like crispy... totally overuse these little babies... *wink*

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