I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a language snob, and perhaps even a word fetishist. I know (oh, boy, do I know) that not everyone shares my love of grammar and of words, but I find a well-turned phrase a thing of beauty. I can spend countless minutes–hours, days, years, even–mulling over in my mind the various subtleties and nuances that can be contained within just a word or two. And it pains me, truly, to see my beloved English language used and misused so callously by so many.
My concern, primarily, is the written language. In casual speech my grammar and usage can be as improper as the next person’s, but I do take considerably more care when writing. It’s not a conscious effort, this care-taking; rather I have a sort of internal regulator that prevents me from writing many of the things I wouldn’t think twice about saying to a friend. This age of email and blogs and online chatrooms and bulletin boards has made it painfully evident that the same is not true of everyone.
I do agree with many who say that a bit of latitude should be granted with regard to these sorts of communication, given that they’re generally not what could be considered “formal” writing, and ordinarily I don’t let myself get all het up over minor grammatical and usage errors. I save my dismay and outrage for those errors that demonstrate that we are becoming a people with a woeful lack of knowledge about our own language.
Cases in point:
- the pervasive confusion of the words “weary” and “wary”; While it is possible for one to be weary of putting all of one’s eggs in one basket, it is much more likely that he or she is wary.
- the number of people on internet message boards who just want to “speak their peace”
- the number of people whose interest is “peeked,” or perhaps even “peaked” by the introduction of a certain subject
- the rampant misuse of the phrase “begs the question;” “begging the question” is a logical fallacy; the phrase most people are wanting is “raises the question”
- the oft-typed “ya’ll” as a contraction for “you all;” that doesn’t even make sense!
A favorite site of mine that discusses many of these errors can be found here. Now, I don’t claim to be perfect and I have been known to make a grammar or usage error now and again, but there are many items on that page that leave me honestly baffled. How can someone not know, for instance, that it’s “deep-seated,” not “deep-seeded”? Don’t people read?!
My husband is an intelligent person. I base this on college exam scores and that he really seems to be a cornucopia of knowledge on a variety of subjects. For whatever reason, though, he says “subjest” instead of “suggest”. I can’t even began to wonder why. These little slips that are constantly made even in the spoken language grate on my nerves.
Yall is the proper Southern way to say “you all.” 😉 Because we do say it. Colloquialism. Y’all is the most technically correct way to *write* it.
Maggie, I know. 🙂
My problem is with it being written “ya’ll” instead of the correct “y’all.”
I think a lot of the errors come from people who are not comfortable with writing. They hear seeded instead of seated and peace instead of piece. They haven’t seen it written before . . .not readers in other words.
My particular hot button is click instead of clique.
This is a huge issue for me. It grates on my nerves the misuse of “there”, “their” and “they’re” in the written language. But the worst thing lately in in pronunciation. Hubby has this thing about people saying ‘jew-lery’ instead of ‘jewel-ry’ or ‘noo-cu-lar’ instead of ‘nuclear’. And don’t get me started with ‘axed’ (for asked) and ‘ekscape’ and ‘ekspecially’. And where did people get the idea to add a ‘th’ to the end of the word ‘height’?