Wednesday, June 26, 2013

David'Z RantZ ~~ Return of the Grammar Nazi


Nope, no Comical Wednesday entry today, fellow babies!

I've often said "Ya gotta love the internet," for various reasons, as appropriate.

However, thanks to improperly proofread emails, blogs, and websites, the following words have now become interchangeableat least, as far as how they appear in articles and other kinds of postings:

  • an/and
  • to/too
  • peak/peek
  • form/from
  • hugh/huge
  • advise/advice
  • breath/breathe
  • cloths/clothes
  • discreet/discrete
  • then/than
  • past/passed
  • were/where

Not to mention confusion concerning words like "loose" and "lose," "it's" and "its," "who's" and "whose," etc. In fact, I predict that the word "lose" (with that spelling) won't even exist in a decade or two!

"Intact" -- rendered as two words, "in tact" -- gets a category all its own.

The above examples are hardly exhaustive, just the ones that occur to me at the moment!

And spell-checker programs don't help, because they can't check your grammar. So misused words like "their," "there" and "they're" can squeak by easily.

Ever See This?

I halve a spelling checker,
It came with my pea see.
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I dew knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait aweigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the era rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

I've scent this massage threw it,
And I'm shore your pleased too no
Its letter prefect in every weigh;
My checker tolled me sew.

Or this?

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer
in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is
taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be
a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is
bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the
wrod as a wlohe. Pettry amzanig huh?

That is kind of amazing. I have to wonder if it's really because "because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole," or if it's just that we as a society have learned to "translate," as it were, because we've just become so damned used to people on the internet who either 1) don't know how to spell and don't care, or 2) are too lazy or rushed (it can vary) to proofread what they've written before sending or posting it. Ha!

So, "Ya gotta love the internet?" Well, not always.

And don't worry, I don't want to sound too high-and-mighty. I make an occasional error myself! Damned shame, ain't it?

End of rant.

Thanks for your time.

16 comments:

  1. you may want to losen your underwear a bit
    their a tad tite grammer boy....hahahahaha

    ReplyDelete
  2. haha some are pretty bad to screw up, from and form obviously they are a tad dyslexic, or just too lazy to look. Too and to I play with here and there i know, but at least I don't throw in two as well at my show.

    And maybe you should be like Brian and go commando

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sometimes we bloggers goof when we're trying to dash off a post. It's the same thing for emails. We write them quickly, and in slips a typo or other mistake. Neither really matters in the grand scheme of things, but it's fun to tease people now and then.

      Delete
  3. The loose and lose thing makes me so annoyed. Not sure what's wrong with me--my mom was/is a stickler for good grammar, and I guess it rubbed off a little.

    Oh, and how did this post go from grammar to underwear choices? I see no connection. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm really not in the moral standing to criticize anyone's grammar I know my English is not perfect but I dont wrote like this:(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gloria, English isn't your first language, so nobody should be giving you a hard time about it. :)

      Delete
  5. Yeah I am bad about it sometimes myself. I have been fine mostly with the your, you're and its, it's and all those like it, but still most people have blind spots.

    Loved the poem.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have a couple of "blind spots," too. There are a couple of words which I tend to misspell, so in my case a spell-checker does come in handy.

      Delete
  6. Lose and loose make me insane. But everything makes me insane.

    Love,
    Janie

    ReplyDelete
  7. After Brian and Pat's suggestions, I forgot what your post was about! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Grate peace. I have been looking for a blog like yours for some time, glad I finally found you. I think I knew your father - did he used to have a blog?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Damned spam comments... :)

      My grandfather had a Twitter for Gentlefolk account back in the '50s, I believe...

      Welcome back, Alan.

      Delete

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