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Please use "a lot", since those words are actually in the dictionary. </grammar rant>

Roadkill on the Information Superhighway by: Deborah Lambert, March 30, 2009 Charlotte Allen reminded readers on mindingthecampus.com that when you hear the words “for the 21st century” in conjunction with an educational topic, “you know it’s time to run for cover.” Here’s why: During a recent conference of English teachers in San Francisco, a report released by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) suggested that teachers should “quit emphasizing essays and formal papers” . . .and “bring 21st-century writing habits into the classroom.” Allen noted that as recently as five years ago, this would have meant “blogging, e-mailing,...

When President Obama speaks before Congress and the nation tonight, he will be facing some of his toughest critics. Grammar junkies. Since his election, the president has been roundly criticized by bloggers for using “I” instead of “me” in phrases like “a very personal decision for Michelle and I” or “the main disagreement with John and I” or “graciously invited Michelle and I.” The rule here, according to conventional wisdom, is that we use “I” as a subject and “me” as an object, whether the pronoun appears by itself or in a twosome. Thus every “I” in those quotes ought...

We got this photo of the woman who was viciously killed during Lil' Kim's birthday bash ... apparently just before she died. The pic shows Ingrid Rivera in an elevator with a group of girls on their way up to the VIP section of Spotlight Live, the club that hosted the party. The party was Saturday night. Last night, Rivera's body was found on the roof of the building in a shed. She died from blunt force trauma to the back of her head. The photographer who took the pic tells us it was taken around 1:00 AM Monday. Lots...

I started reading Obama's "Audacity of Hope," to discover more inconsistencies between what he wrote then and what he speaks now. Only problem is that Obama is one of the worst writers I've ever read. It is so bad that the book should be called, "The Audacity of Ghastly Grammar and Sucky Syntax." The book is a mess of run-on sentences that are chock-full of errors in grammar, syntax, and punctuation. Run-on sentences was something that my fourth-grade teacher taught our class how to avoid by breaking them into separate sentences. One would think that, by the time he finished...

Intuitive Grammar Develops By Age Six, Say Researchers ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2008) — Psychologists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that children as young as six are as adept at recognising possible verbs and their past tenses as adults. In a study conducted by the University's Child Language Study Centre, children aged between six and nine were given sentences containing made-up verbs such as 'the duck likes to spling' and were asked to judge the acceptability of possible past tense forms. The study focused on the process the children used to come to their conclusions rather than whether their...

Leaders to adorn sackcloth and ashes to fight crime At Tuesday’s Birmingham City Council meeting, Mayor Larry Langford proclaimed Friday, April 25, a “day of prayer in sackcloth and ashes” in Birmingham. Birmingham Weekly reported two weeks ago that the mayor purchased 2,000 burlap sacks for ministers and other community leaders to wear at a Plan 10/30 summit. To many Christians, sackcloth and ashes symbolize humility and repentance, but the mayor’s decree came dressed with the usual accoutrements - printed on fine, invitation-stock paper and wrapped in a bright silver folder, adorned by the magic hat logo Langford commissioned for...

"If I was President, this wouldn't have happened," John Kerry said during Hezbollah's war on Israel last summer. As 2004's Democratic presidential nominee should know, he should have said, "If I were President…" It's sad, but hardly surprising, that the subjunctive evades someone of Kerry's stature. The English language is under fire, as if it strolled into an ambush. It would be bad enough if this assault involved the slovenly grammar, syntax, and spelling of drooling boors. But America's elites -- politicians, journalists, and marketers who should know better -- constantly batter our tongue. The subjunctive, for instance, lies gravely...

For at least 150 years, people have been trying to solve the pronoun dilemma. That would be the dilemma that causes odd word formations out of fairness to both genders: "he or she," "him or her," or "s/he." Some avoid the gender question altogether by speaking in the plural, as in "If anyone asks, tell them what they need to know." Some people have taken the more extreme approach of devising entirely new pronouns that specify no gender. "Ne," "hizer," "thon," "shem" and "herm" are just a few that came along and faded quickly. They're known as gender-neutral, or epicene,...

Helping Your Child Prepare 1. Be sure your child/children get plenty of rest the night before the test and eat a good breakfast on testing days(sic) 2. The morning of the test-taking day should be calm for your child. Make sure that you and your child are not rushed and that your child has time to prepare for the day. 3. Take time to talk with your child about your confidence in him or her. Encourage your child to take the test serious, but don't cause your child to be anxious about the test. Let your child know that you...

Not allowed to post articles from the El Paso Times... All I can do is give you the link.

If there is a better losing cause than the fight against slovenly language, I am unaware of it....A man who has taken it on is Robert Hartwell Fiske, who runs an online monthly journal called the Vocabula Review (www.vocabula.com), which, as Mr. Fiske writes, "battles nonstandard, careless English and embraces clear, expressive English," and hopes to encourage its readers to do likewise. Vocabula means "words" in Latin, and words are the name of Mr. Fiske's game. Read the Vocabula Review, and you will be convinced that the battle ought to be yours, too. Mr. Fiske is the latest--and let us...

Mike Greiner teaches grammar to high school sophomores in half-hour lessons, inserted between Shakespeare and Italian sonnets. He is an old-school grammarian, one of a defiant few in the Washington region who believes in spending large blocks of class time teaching how sentences are built. For this he has earned the alliterative nickname "Grammar Greiner," along with a reputation as one of the tougher draws in the Westfield High School English department. Or, as one student opined in a sonnet he wrote, "Mr. Greiner, I think you're torturing us." Greiner, 43, teaches future Advanced Placement students at the Chantilly, Va.,...

SCOTUS has weighed in on a very controversial topic, though since it was not the issue of the case, the ruling cannot be said to be definitive. In both written and spoken English (both British and American usage) there is a growing tendency to omit the "s" after the apostrophe in the genitive form of singular nouns ending in "s". Traditionally this was the practice only in the plural, thus it would be "New Yorkers' preferences are generally for the Democrats" but "Kansas's voting record leans towards the Republicans". One of the largest parks in central London is St James's...

When are Liberals going to get it? The result of the past several elections show that the country is very nearly split 50-50 and yet liberal movie stars and musicians go out and bash Republicans. Why deliberately poke the eye of 50% of your potential market - Econ 101 anyone? As a result movie revenues are down, concert tickets aren't selling (Dixie Chicks) major contracts are not being renewed. The same with news outlets. The NY Time, LA Times, WAPO, etc. are all reporting declining revenue and profits. Gee, is there any link to the fact that they go out...

College administrators are scratching their heads trying to figure our how the straight-A students they accepted tanked on the SATs. “The University of California system, for instance, reported a 15-point drop in applicants’ scores but no corresponding dips in other measures of their quality, such as class rank and grade-point average,” Eric Hoover reports in the September 8th issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. “At La Salle University in Philadelphia, SAT scores fell an average of 15 points for applicants and about 10 points for admitted students even though officials had not altered their admissions strategies.” “Robert G. Voss,...

As readers of this space know, we frequently subject academics to what we view as constructive criticism. As travelers through the blogosphere may have noticed, they sometimes answer those critiques. “Someone named Candace de Russy (on the usually unbearably dreadful National Review blog on the university situation 'Phi Beta Cons') cites someone else named Laura Ventura at Accuracy in Academia to the effect that the fact that the journal Critical Inquiry has more citations of Derrida and Marx than of C. S. Lewis and Thomas Jefferson is an indication of the journal’s ‘anti-American, anti-war, and anti-Christian’ stance,” Bucknell sociologist Alexander...

The academic left has painted itself into a peculiar corner. They urge the rejection of traditional grammar as chauvinistic, or, more frequently, “hegemonic.” Unfortunately for them, they eventually have to read papers by students who have previously been taught by teachers who also share this outlook. One of the seminal texts that promotes the “grammar is dead” thesis is Preparing to Teach Writing by James Williams. “Ironically, the third edition of Williams’ book Preparing to Teach Writing appeared in 2003, the same year the National Commission on Writing made public its discovery that ‘Recent analyses indicate that more than 50...

Slang, jargon, shortcuts, vernacular, jive -- whatever you want to call the stuff, we all use improper speech at times. I used "ain't'' in my column recently. But it was with distress that I read Dwyane Wade's comment about teammate Udonis Haslem's tossing of his mouthguard at a ref in Game 2 of the Bulls-Heat series. "I don't think he would do nothing like that intentionally,'' Wade said. The sentiment's fine. I mean the grammar. The double negative, harmless as it seems -- maybe used for effect, maybe not -- connected in my mind for an instant the depressing bridge...

Between them, city councillors Howard Moscoe and Glenn De Baeremaeker have more vowels in their names than most of their colleagues. But they'd like to buy one more -- the letter U -- for the city. On Monday, they will try to sweet-talk the administration committee into a policy to buy software with a built-in Canadian spell-check. "It is our attempt to keep a little bit of Canadian culture alive and well and not to be smothered by the great elephant next door called the United States," said Mr. De Baeremaeker, who represents Scarborough Centre. "With all the rocket scientists...

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Remember when a noun was defined as a person, place or thing? In a teen magazine that is becoming part of the Baltimore middle-school reading curriculum, the noun is being redefined as "stuff." That makes a verb "what stuff does." It's part of a new approach in the Baltimore school system to teaching reading and writing in middle schools. Some say the new method doesn't have much of a track record. The change is being made after a dismal performance on state standardized tests this spring. The Baltimore Sun reported Sunday that officials have spent at least...

Though copy editors and popular writers have known it for long, an experiment by a psychologist establishes the key to impressive writing - keep it plain and simple. Writers who use long words needlessly and choose complicated font styles in print are seen as less intelligent than those who employ basic vocabulary and plain text, according to new research from the Princeton University in New Jersey to be published in the next edition of Applied Cognitive Psychology. In the study titled 'Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly', Daniel Oppenheimer based his findings...

Grammar analysis reveals ancient language treeIt's not the words, it's how you use them that counts. Jennifer Wild The languages used in Papua New Guinea have few common words, making it hard to determine their origins. When it comes to working out the relationships between ancient languages, grammar is more enlightening than vocabulary, scientists say. There are some 300 language families in the world today. Researchers have long studied similarities between the words in different languages to try to work out how they are related. But the rate of change in languages means that this method really only works back...

PORTLAND, ORE. - Shortly after Katrina slammed into New Orleans, a radio announcer described the plight of residents "refugeed" to other areas. Apparently one of the lesser known effects of the storm was its impact on the noun "refugee." Then a recent article about the electoral reform commission that's been studying problems with the 2004 campaign included this sentence about voter registration: "Democratic activists also said intimidatory tactics had been used against ethnic or racial minorities ..." In his novel "1984" George Orwell depicted a police state that maintained absolute power through a variety of tactics, including the imposition of...

Missing comma sends wrong message:- NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla. | July 03, 2005 5:11:34 AM IST A minor omission in anti-drug signs at bus stops in North Miami Beach make it look like local police are supplying drugs, not crusading against drug use. What was left out was a comma or dash or some sort of grammatical separator. The signs read Say NO' to Drugs from the NMB Police D.A.R.E Officers, the Miami Herald reported. I know what the message should be, but right now it means something else, Emilio Guerra, a local resident and grammar stickler, told Mayor Raymond...

All right, boys and girls, it's been twelve years since that September morning in 1993 when your mom gave you one last hug, brushed away your tears, and told you to listen to your first grade teacher. Well, you've made it. You're graduating high school. In the next couple of months, you'll be walking down that long aisle, watching your step as you climb to the stage, taking that diploma from your principal's hand — and then, afterwards, posing for photos with weepy relatives. You're ready for college . . . Not so fast, Poindexter. Here's a pop quiz (answers...

Please post your favorite ZOT threads here....Here's mine!TOm Harikins has lied to me, and them MOds DOne ZOtted my POst! Posted on 07/20/2004 9:30:08 AM PDT by amham98 Tom Harkins lied to me he said that he would call me 2 to 3 weeks after the eliction and help me get my ssi. he has never called to help he stole a vote theffs belong in jail I have tried to get ssi and disability for the last 14 years I was not working at the time that I started for it they denied me then now whty denie me...

Representatives of the popular Times Roman font recently announced a shortage of periods and have offered substitutes -- such as inverted commas, exclamation marks, and semicolons -- until the crisis is overcome by people such as yourself, who through creative management of surplus punctuation can perhaps allay the constant demand for periods, whose heavy usage in the last ten years (not only in English but in virtually every language in the world) is creating a burden on writers everywhere, thus generating a litany of comments, among them: "What the hell am I supposed to do without my periods? How am...

This transition seems to be overused, at least to me: having said that and its variations that said, that being said, that having been said, etc. Now my problem is this. I'm not a particularly good writer and I've always had problems with transitions. Can anyone offer help to me and others on the use of transitions without falling back on the previous examples? Also, do you think I was right in referring to the aforementioned transition as being overused. And while we're at it, is transition the proper term?

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. There are some things I just do not understand, and I am at a point where I have given up on figuring out many of these puzzlers. But there are still some conundrums I am determined to solve. For the life of me I cannot understand how it is that we have reached this level in our academic careers and we still cannot speak proper English. We have all taken at least seven years of secondary English classes prior to coming to Penn State, and once we are here, we must...

I am starting a grammar thread at the behest of Xenalyte and TheMom. Post your most irritating pet peeves of grammar or usage here.

A Tall Order, Grammatically BY DAVE BARRY Oct. 10, 2004 Join us now for another rendition of ''Ask Mister Language Person,'' the only grammar column mentioned by name in the Bible, as well as the official grammar column of the American Association of English Teachers in the Staff Lounge Counting the Days Until Retirement. We begin today with a disturbing escalation in the trend of coffee retailers giving stupid names to cup sizes. As you know, this trend began several years ago when Starbucks (motto: ''There's one opening right now in your basement'') decided to call its cup sizes ''Tall''...

Ever since my first encounter with Chaucer in the eighth grade I've been thinking about the way the English language is changing. At what point, I wondered, will familiar texts like the Declaration of Independence, say, become as challenging to future generations as "Aprill, with his shoures soote" was to me? And why do those who don't understand the rules of grammar, alas, be the ones who get to change them? There: With that "alas," I've tipped my hand as a prescriptivist, a believer in the "should" and "must" of language. Sometimes, though, I try to mellow out and be...

High Standards A gentleman in Alaska has sent me a copy of an exam the state of Washington required of all 8th-graders in 1910. I suspect that today many college graduates would have difficulty passing it. All of the questions were essay, and students were graded on their ability to write as well as on penmanship. Teachers did not "teach to the test." In fact, after the tests were handed out, the teachers left, and an outsider sat in the room. Students were not allowed to ask questions, and no explanations were given. Minimum passing grade in grammar and arithmetic...

Greenspan tells us what to do. Someone should take him out and hang him."

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- A suspect was linked to a series of bank robberies by his own bad spelling, police said. Robert C. Whitney's consistently confused the words ''dye'' and ''die'' in robbery notes given to bank tellers, police said. A note used in a Gainesville robbery read ''If a die pack blows, so do you,'' said police Sgt. Keith Kameg. The same wording had been used on notes in two Volusia County robberies, he said. ''If anything says education is important to your future, this case says that,'' Kameg said. ''As simple as spelling one word wrong was instrumental...

Bea Ishler was bothered by these words on a tee shirt: "Act different. Think different. Look different." "I think that there is an adverb hiding there and it should be 'act differently' and 'think differently,'" she wrote. "Am I wrong?" You'll get arguments, Bea, as people debate whether the verbs "act" and "think" are copulative. If they are copulative, then the adjective "different" is appropriate; it describes the understood subject, "you," and not the verb "act" or "think." If they're not copulative, the adverb "differently" should be used. What's a copulative verb? It's a verb that provides a strong relationship...

"Through me the way into the suffering city, Through me the way to the eternal pain, Through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my high artificer; My maker was divine authority, The highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, And I endure eternally. Abandon every hope, ye who enter here." While using the internet as a resource to develop a homeschool curriculum for my 12 year old, I stumbled across a wonderful resource that I feel I must share with my fellow Freepers found here. The author uses...

People often tell Julie Miller: "E-mail's ruined me." As a business-writing coach, Miller spends her time teaching professionals — architects, bankers, engineers, you name it — to write better, faster. And it appears that, increasingly, companies of all kinds are realizing the importance of the written word. "Writing skills are a career-maker or breaker," Miller said. "There's no place to hide now, with everyone having access to a computer, because your writing is on display." Good writing skills are especially important if you are looking for a job. In a tough economy, employers often are deluged with résumés and cover...

In a recent thread, we discussed teachers' various abilities/inabilities. With the banter about math "blocks," I had to start calling people on the frequent mis-usage of the pronoun "that." I teased others--and I hope the understood my playful intent! Even true mathematicians can make simple mistakes in math. Likewise, even true grammarians can make simple mistakes in grammar. I only made note because of the subject of the thread (An English teacher who was having trouble passing a required math test). In the thread, I mentioned that I could give a quick-fix lesson on how to determine whether one should...

Pariah Against A Prophet By Marc Miyake, Amritas.Com Many conservatives regard Chomsky as a linguist who falters out of his field. Unfortunately, they are giving Chomsky too much credit. Chomsky's linguistics are as warped as his politics. As someone with a PhD in linguistics, I think I am qualified to judge his professional credentials. Prior to Chomsky, linguists engaged in a lot of data collection to understand the diversity of human language. I'm vehemently anti-PC, but in this case, I think the word 'diversity' is justified. There's a lot out there, and someone's got to catalog it. However, Chomsky...

I recently finished reading a book for my college class. The book is entitled "Working with Words" and it is by Brian Brooks, James L. Pinson, and Jean Gaddy Wilson. The book is supposed to teach you the writer how to write using AP style. I was fine with the book until the 13th chapter. The subject drifts completely away from grammer, and the authors go into a unrelated diatribe on racism. Naturally being a conservative I was very upset by this, and will use this the next time I hear some liberal say that America's colleges aren't left leaning....

<p>CHICAGO — Use a little slang and you've got their attention. That seems to be the growing thought in corporate America and the media, eager to hook the younger crowd.</p> <p>Some sportscasters have started describing impressive plays as "sick." Before that, Budweiser ads helped place the greeting "Whassup" in the American lexicon.</p>

CONFIDENTIAL MEMO DATE. September 25, 2002 TO: Congressman Dick Gebhardt FROM Barbra Streisand/Margery Tabankin RE. Take the Offense As you know, Barbra Streisand is busy in rehearsals for the performance she's giving on Sunday for the DCCC, so she asked me convey to you her feeling that it is time for the Democrats to get off the defensive and go on the offensive. Naturally, Barbra's not surprised to see the Bush administration evoke strong rhetoric about Democrats caring more about their own 'special interests' than protecting the security of the country. Of course, the Republicans will say anything they need...

The quality of education is slipping even as I write this. Here are three grammatical errors that are ubiquitous and grating: 1. Misuse of subject and object, specifically "I" where "me" is called for, and "he" where "him" is called for. Examples of incorrect usage: a) Let's keep this secret between you and I. b) If you put he and Barry Bonds on the same team, they'd score a million runs. I'm pretty sure I know where this got started--it's a misinterpretation of a lesson we all received in grade school. Someone would say, "Me and Jimmy went fishing," and...

Saturday, May 18, 2002 - LEADVILLE - This storied mining town perched on the roof of the Rockies made political history last year as the first municipality in Colorado with a Libertarian majority on its seven-member city council. Today, Libertarians have gathered here to breathe the thin but heady air of freedom at their party's state convention. Political conventions of the Repubocrat or Demolican variety generally center on career paths, not ideas. Political panjandrums like to keep ideas locked up in the basement, where they won't embarrass the big campaign contributors. But wherever two or more Libertarians gather, expect to...