Grammar Gripes and Other Psycholinguistic Squawkings

I'm not allowed to post in this thread, as I am a walking Grammar Gripe.

*****

The flip side of this coin are people who take ONE autocorrect mistake on facebook and spend ALL DAY making jokes about it. Pisses me off to no end. You know who you are and I home you realize it.

/sarcasm

 

In the past I have been a lurker due to grammar and spelling police. I completely understand how missed punctuation, incorrect grammar and poor spelling can affect a readers understanding of the sentence. I also understand how it can make the writer look completely stupid. I would like to say that not everyone who makes mistakes is stupid and or lazy. I personally live with this struggle day in day out; I live with an inability to spell certain types of words no matter how hard I try. I often get 'is' and 'are' mixed up, along with incorrect placement of vowels within a word. Nine times out of ten I simply delete what I was going to post as I can not decide how to phrase something. My sentences are often incorrectly composed; often obscuring their meaning. Spelling and grammar are really only the tip of the problem for me, as I struggle to put my thoughts to paper. It is like I know all the rules, and know what I wish to say but somewhere between my head and my hand everything is dropped in a large bowl and mixed up a bit. I then spend so much time trying to put it back together I completely loose my train of thought. (It has taken me 15 minutes to write this, using google to spell check, to double check my use of is and are, check affect and effect (still slightly unsure), check where commas go, check the use of semicolons, and also check nouns and verbs.)

 

We lurve you, Eden.
I home you will forgive us...

 

Whoops. The double negative is not problematic (to me). I generally track where a speaker positions his or her statment on the continuum from subjective to objective judgement, and it is the lost performative which offends (me).

 

You better frame that motherfucker, 'cause it's the only error free statement you are ever getting out of me.

 

Whoa. I'm pretty sure I'm going crazy. Did Baraka just fuck up too = two?

And ease up on the exclamation point. It's served me well over the years.

So much hatred for that poor mark. I think Halx called me out on it once.

 

Actually, that one was right, too.
Today's metric fuck-ton of epic grammar failure comes from our Admin Assistant.
The email comes with no less than two spelling errors, three arbitrary apostrophes, two semi-colons that should have been commas and errant capital letters. It was only eight sentences long. And went out to the entire agency.
*sigh*

 

Hi
I empathise with you and admire your post. I would have taken at least that long and done as many checks. Heck. So much of what you describe describes me too. I have a history of fear-of-posting. I joined this place in 2006 but my first post was shortly before Christmas 2010. At the moment of pressing 'Submit' or 'Post', I often feel like I am diving to my doom. I reckon your post puts your position, and also your appreciation of that of others, extremely clearly. I presume to believe you'd already confirmed this for yourself or you would not have posted. I bet, due to the adversity you have described, you have developed a blazingly effective high-quality control.

Respect and best wishes

 

Sooo... how do you feel about editing the 79 page manual I just wrote? That'll make your head swim.

And I'm just messin' with you. I have no room to talk... with my constant incorrect use of the ellipsis.

 

Thanks, it's nice to know there are other people out there who also struggle and can empathise. I decided a few years ago that I am not stupid and should worry less about other people. It's been a long hard slog, not always in the right direction, but I do feel I am getting somewhere. I have been to Uni and got a decent degree. I have a good job (albeit currently only temporary until Christmas and only 2 days a week). I have decided that I can only do my best when it comes to spelling and grammar and it's my life so I should just jolly well live it! My quality control has improved over the past year as I have been teaching grammar and spelling to speakers of other languages. Now that's a challenge when you cant manage yourself without conscious effort and double checking!

 

Who was it that considered it poor form, back then?
Wasn't it mostly monks and the like that wrote anything during that time period?
Were you talking about verbal usage, or just written?

 

I only tease people that I know a.) can handle it, b.) make errors only sometimes, or c.) irritate the hell out of me.

 

You write so purty.

 

i don't find grammar policing to be very interesting.
pedantry is tedious in general.

when i used to teach writing, the mechanics were well down on my list of things to address.

students had to learn the rules for making academic papers. they had to figure out what an argument is. they had to learn how to present an argument within the artificial constraints of that type of paper. they had to understand that the primary function of that genre of paper writing is not only the presentation of information, but the presentation of information in a static and static-free enough manner to allow the person charged with grading it to not really read it.

typically, i could get them to address mechanical questions by getting them to shorten their sentences. make them direct, i would say.
it seemed important that the students have content and know how to work with it.
i was less concerned that they could say nothing in a correct manner.

i told mys students that mechanics were important because they deprived the person reading of a reason to misread.
i told them that their grades often depended on things like whether the football team x or y likes happened to be winning or losing at the time the grading occurred.
which could well be on a sunday afternoon in front of the television over a beer or three.
i told them:

say x or y is invested in a team that is being pulverized on national television. that person will then look for a paper to take it out on. grammar errors and the humiliation of a sporting team on national tv could easily combine to produce permanent damage to your grade point average. so don't give the drunken bitter grad student grading your paper a reason to eviscerate you over a football game. avoid stupid errors. you can't control sporting events. but you can control that.

it worked like a charm.
besides, most college students know the basic rules. they just think they're such super-geniuses who don't have to stoop to such vulgar practices as editing.

i know people who teach writing as if by knowing the niggling rules of sentence construction you will magically learn how to think.
sometimes i used to imagine myself a student in one of those classes.
inevitably i would see myself putting tacks in a row across my desk and driving my forehead into them.