One of my favorite scenes from Friends is the one where Joey is trying to apologize to Ross, but he says "I'm sorry" using air quotes. Classic encapsulation of how people can misuse the quotes.
I just saw this offering on the Blogger Dashboard: The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. Though it seems to cover only misused quotation marks, it has the feel of Lynn Truss's book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. You can view - and submit - examples of abused quotation marks, and the blogger's commentary is pretty funny, too.
(In case you're wondering, yes, that 's IS supposed to follow Truss, as Lynn Truss is ONE PERSON. Hence, the singular possessive 's is correct!! You don't just put a lone [plural] apostrophe at the end just because the word ends in s. Read your Strunk & White, people!)
Sorry. My favorite English class in college was Modern English Grammar.
3 comments:
I am frustrated daily by this and tons of other grammatical and punctuation mistakes most people make. It seems like most American's have no idea how to write their own language... but they don't seem to mind or even notice. :(
If people can make up their own truths, why not their own non-rules of grammar?!
I think companies and musicians who deliberately misspell or break the rules of grammar as a gimmick also help aggravate the problem. Kids learn to spell or use language from THEM and think it's correct!
Yes, yes! I can hardly stand to read emails from my eleven year old. Along with bad grammar, there's the abbreviated "email" language. You know, luv instead of love, etc. Grrr... it's a big pet peeve. The other thing I don't like is no capitalization or all caps. Good thing there are a few of us who had good teachers in school! :)
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