Grammar Lessons

I've been bandying about the idea of writing a grammar post and have decided to go with it, even at the risk of boring my few readers who are much too fabulous to ever make any of these mistakes. I just have to get it off my chest!

I'm doing this because the use of bad/incorrect grammar drives me up a tree. One of the admins at work sent out an e-mail last year that read "…taken for granite…" Needless to say, I almost lost my mind on that one. Whatever happened to admins being exceptional in their grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, so they can fix the boss' mistakes because they're much too busy? I can tell you for a fact that it's gone right out the hermetically closed windows at my work.

I'm going to start with the easy ones (and probably my biggest pet peeve):

Your = possession, i.e., your house, your car, your butt, your mother, etc.
You're = You are, as in "you're welcome."

Yup, it's not "your welcome." It's "you are welcome," hence, "you're welcome."

We used to get people at the ESPN racing chat back in 1995/96 who would come in and "Your stupid. Racing sucks." Yeah, they were obviously brain trusts. And we'd get them a lot. It reached the point that when they'd show up, everybody else would sit back and wait for my grammar lesson, it invariably got them to leave very quickly which flaming back at them never did.

A corollary to the first one:

Its vs. it's - Oy vey, people, this is NOT hard!

Its = possession, i.e., its methodology, its arms (be they robotic or monster), its proximity, etc.
It's = it is

There are no exceptions to this rule. Trust me on this one!!!

Another of my pet peeves (yes, I have many in this subject area) is the recent proliferation of the apostrophe to form a plural. IT IS NOT NECESSARY!!! In fact, it's downright WRONG!! I have no clue why this is happening, but it honestly has to stop before I have a heart attack. ;-) It's freaking everywhere. There's a bakery in Greektown that has one of those dry erase boards on which they write what fabulous items they're selling that day (it doesn't change much, actually) and one day they had listed "éclair's, napoleons, cake's, meringue's, etc. I went up to that board and before going in, rubbed out all extraneous apostrophes with my finger. I have no clue why "napoleons" was done correctly, but it was. I don't care if the word ends in a vowel, the apostrophe is used to show possession or in a contraction (i.e., can not = can't), not multiples of an item. It can also be used as a single quote, but you damn well better be using two, one at the beginning and one at the end of the quote.

Next on my list (and again I have no clue how this started) is using the word "good" when you mean fine or well. The correct response to the question "How are you?" is NOT "good." You are well or fine, perhaps, even unwell, but not GOOD!!! Unless, of course, you just donated $100 to your favorite charity, but in that case you are a good person. Good is an adjective (see previous usage of good with person). Well/fine are adverbs and you need an adverb to describe how you *ARE*. Adverbs describe verbs (which is a-whole-nother paragraph), adjectives describe nouns.

Another example of where "well" should be used instead of "good" is in basic sports talk – "We played well tonight." I heard Kris Draper of the Red Wings say that a few years ago and I almost wept with joy at the correct grammar. "We played good" just puts my teeth on edge.

This brings us to the next lesson in adverbial usage. I'm going to use another sports example, since they're so common. "We played defensive." ARGH!! NO!!! "We played defensively." Or if you must use defensive… "We played a defensive game." Again, defensively describes how "we" PLAYED. I don't know what the poor –ly did to people, but it has damn near disappeared from usage and it makes me sad.

Another example: I walked home quickly yesterday because the wind chill was going right through me. – Quickly describing how I WALKED, not me.

Which brings me to my last grammatical point, at least for today, the use of he vs. him, she vs. her, etc., particularly after a preposition.

The other day my niece said, "So-and-so gave it to Tom & I." The YS and I immediately gave her a grammar lesson.

You wouldn't say "So-and-so gave it to I" you would say "to me." Therefore, just because whoever so-and-so is gave it (whatever it is) to Tom and you, it does not change the grammar rule of using the objective (me) vs. subjective (I). "Grandma gave it to Tom and me." Or expanded: "Tom and I were at Grandma's today and she gave a plate of cookies to him and me." (or "to us.")

This is a very common mistake with the preposition "between." I think people think it sounds more classy or something, because this one really makes people argue.

Incorrect - "The problem is between Tom & I and we'll solve it ourselves."
Correct - "The problem is between Tom and me, and we'll solve it ourselves."

Or even more commonly, "Between you and I,…" should always be "Between you and me,…"

And don't try to argue with me that it sounds better, etc., the wrong way because it doesn't. You just think it does, because it's so prevalent that it sounds right. When you get used to the correct way, you, too, will cringe the next time an athlete says, "Me and Tom played good tonight." I trust I don't have to discuss the "me" as subject usage nor its placement. ;-)