Sunday, July 7, 2013

A noun and a verb are at a bar...

While I enjoy a good grammar joke...

A noun and a verb are at a bar. They spot each other, and the verb smiles and goes over to the noun. "Hello there," the verb says to the noun. "Want to come back to my place and conjugate?" The noun replies, "Oh, no. I decline."

Good grammar is no joking matter. Yet what passes for writing these days is often laughable.

And I know I am not the only person who feels this way in regard to grammar (or starts a sentence with a conjunction, which, by the way, is acceptable if not done too frequently).

Indeed, type "grammar errors" into Google and the search engine immediately spits out over 18 million search results, including this brilliant video from Mental Floss, titled "38 Common Spelling and Grammar Errors." Not only is the video funny, it is instructive.



You're welcome.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A lot is TWO WORDS people!!!!

TWO!!!!!

J. said...

I had an English teacher in elementary school who would scream at students who said "a lot." She said, "a lot" is where you park your car. To this day, I flinch whenever I hear (or use) the term.

Dave S. said...

I had teachers like that. What did she propose as an alternative to a completely acceptable colloquialism? How did she deal with the concept of "casting lots" - did she imagine people throwing parking spaces around? English is not exactly a one-meaning-per-word language.

Wow, Anonymous, that's a lot of exclamation points. (runs for cover)