Posted on 02/28/2013 8:40:02 AM PST by Shout Bits
Will Rogers famously wanted his epitaph to read "I never met a man I didn't like." I sometimes turn a joke on Mr. Rogers's line, and say "I have never met anyone with good grammar I did not like." Considering today's state of affairs, grammar is an unlikely metric for kinship. The nation is overrun with a socialist fever, unsustainable government obligations, and appalling corruption. Why should grammar sit with these important issues?
Man's greatest tool in building an environment to his liking is language. Every success employs communication and retrieval of archived knowledge. Employing Standard English is the least we can do to respect the foundation of society.
Also, anyone using correct grammar is part rebel. Grammar is not effectively taught in school, so anyone employing Standard English learned it elsewhere. Standard English is rarely spoken on the street, so its use is a conscious choice that sets grammar rebels apart. There are few rewards for tense agreement or proper gerund use, so the grammar rebel must do it for sport or to set an independent standard for himself. Those who claim to rebel by tattooing themselves or squatting with Occupy types are conformist and commonplace compared to a grammar rebel.
A happy nature of Standard English is its incompatibility with Political Correctness. Because the singular object is 'his,' and PC has no imagination, most people use 'their' (e.g. 'everybody lost their investments when Ponzi was arrested'). Anyone with common sense knows that when 'everybody' and 'his' are used together, females are implied. PC militants know this too, but their motive is thought control. In 1984, George Orwell warned that language laws could be used to limit expression and thought; yet the same PC autocrats that assign Orwell to their students practice the perversion of language for political gain with no apparent ironic guilt. Anyone who still speaks Standard English or dares to use anachronisms such as 'freshman' vs. 'first year student' is a rebel who must signal danger to the PC police. PC is about limiting thought and expression so that ideology falls in line. Standard English is sublime resistance.
Grammar rebels are independent thinkers beyond PC politics. NBC anchors butcher the tool of their trade nightly, as do most newscasters. NBC news president Steve Capus resigned this month, coincident with numerous ethical scandals, including fraudulent editing of tapes to make innocent people sound racist and generally insensitive. NBC actively lies to promote its agenda, a practice well beyond ordinary bias. Bias is inevitable and universal, but active campaigns of deception are inexcusable. When a grammar rebel rejects the language of Brian Williams, it shows that he is informing himself elsewhere.
Be a grammar rebel; employ Standard English. There may be no better way of demonstrating independent thought and values on a daily basis. There may not be enough time, and certainly not enough energy to fight PC and the socialist Old Media at every turn, but a grammar rebel can stand apart without hardly never trying.
Shout Bits can be found on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ShoutBits
She's in the kitchen baking cookies.
i enjoyed this article... thank you for sharing... i know... i purposely do not use caps (except for proper nouns) when conversing on social media... nor do i use the period... i opt for ellipses to string my words together... i do know the grammar rules for writing a solid sentence and employ them when necessary...
one big, blaring grammar blunder i hear daily—from newscasters to teachers to even actors on television shows (where they follow a written script) is the use of “I” instead of “me” when following a preposition... people who should know better do not, apparently...
So you're either a moron or a young child.
It must be devilish hard to be taken seriously when writing like a drooling idiot.
I wholeheartedly recommend that FReepers use correct grammar online.
No matter how logical our thought-patterns are: if we use lower-case letters and ellipses as sentence-delimiters we come across as breathy serial-killers.
We have a few users of ellipse-delimited sentences on our corporate intranet. I'm sorry to say that no matter how cogent they are in person; they come across as rambling psychopaths in print because they refuse to properly signal the beginning- and end- points of their sequential thought.
Unfortunately, insisting on propur speling and gramer is a loosing battle...
Be a grammar rebel; employ Standard English. There may be no better way of demonstrating independent thought and values on a daily basis.
Amen!
If you want my attention, step right up and earn it by expressing your thoughts intelligently.
If I can’t clearly understand a person’s first sentence due to poor grammar, spelling, or punctuation, I don’t bother deciphering the rest. I figure if their point isn’t important enough to warrant care when posting, it isn’t important for me to read it.
One of my pet peeves is “could of/should of” instead of “could have/should have.” I see those all the time.
Also, if I see “my bad” or (God help me) “cray-cray” again, I’ll scream.
Note to PC politics I don’t got good grammar,deal with it.
The most common prepositions are "about," "above," "across," "after," "against," "along," "among," "around," "at," "before," "behind," "below," "beneath," "beside," "between," "beyond," "but," "by," "despite," "down," "during," "except," "for," "from," "in," "inside," "into," "like," "near," "of," "off," "on," "onto," "out," "outside," "over," "past," "since," "through," "throughout," "till," "to," "toward," "under," "underneath," "until," "up," "upon," "with," "within," and "without."
There simply aren't that many instances where "I" could be used in the manner you suggest. In other instances it's the only choice available.
"Since I...", for example, is the only choice that makes sense, isn't it? You wouldn't say "Since me...", would you?
In most instances the speaker would sound like an absolute idiot if they used "I" instead of "me". "About I..." or "About me..."? "Toward me..." or "toward I..."?
Perhaps you could explain further what you're trying to say.
Although my grammar,over all,isn't that bad my punctuation skills...as well as my ability to construct a paragraph...is pretty bad,as anyone familiar with my posts understands.
this here be a gud post...and my regards to yer granma!
Semper watching!
*****
Just because you can’t learn proper American in school or on the streets doesn’t make you a “rebel.” It makes you educated and cultured. While this has some political implications, maybe, I’m sure plenty enough of our best wordsmiths are hopeless tools of the state. One of my favorite English prose stylists, Orwell, was a socialist, for the love of liberty.
“My grammar isn’t perfect but I see it as essential. Language is one of the few things that separate us from lower species. “
I, too, make grammar mistakes; nobody is perfect. I find that sloppy language such as the misuse of “myself” creeps in, and I have to consciously cut it out.
You've got to love those "Grammar Nazis" and "Spelling Freaks" that patrol message boards and threads looking for any mistakes.
yes--i can explain further... i can see i was not clear... it is when it is used with the pronoun, "you." for instance, "...between you and i." "she went off on you and i." "they will never make it without you and i." "those lowlifes are beneath you and i."
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