18.11.08

Why I'm Not a Grammar Nazi

  1. I associate Nazis with bad haircuts
  2. In my opinion, nothing makes one more pretentious and self-righteous than unnecessarily correcting the mistakes of others
  3. While I appreciate the English language (and the United States' dialect particularly), constant doting on the rules leaves little time for adventurous and experimental language.
  4. I am constantly committing my own pet peeves. If I were a Grammar Nazi, this would be horribly irritating. But I am not...cognitive dissonance solved. ((I started the preceding sentence with a conjunction. That's a no-no. I also have a tendency to use ellipses whenever and wherever I see fit. Furthermore, I often double-up on my parentheses as exhibited in the present sidenote)).
Why on Earth am I talking about this? I shall tell you.

Last week, I turned in a take-home test for my cataloging course. It ended up being a good 12 pages of solid writing...which I accomplished in all of two days. Tonight in class (or I suppose it was last night as it is now 1:00 AM), the exam was returned with comments. All in all, the grade was not so bad. Full disclosure: 90 = A-, which I can deal with. But as I looked through her comments, I could not help but face palm. I used the word "between" when discussing differences among three institutions. Face palm. I committed my number one pet peeve when I used the possessive pronoun "their" when I intended to use "there." Face...wait for it...palm. At one point, I put a period in the middle of a sentence. Of course, spellcheck didn't catch that one because I intelligently capitalized the letter following the punctuation mark. Face palm. Then (apparently, for shits and giggles), I committed the between/among transgression one more time.

Ugh.

Meh. What are ya gonna do? I use converstational United Statesish. Language exists for communication and if I am able to do at least that much with my native tongue...well...kudos to little old me!

3 comments:

Maxim Khailo said...

At the time, nazi haircut was the rage. Proper and clean.

Since I am not a nazi nor am I a language nut. I have to say that I don't even have any language pet peeves.

Anonymous said...

You have won my heart with your punctuation love and your confession over at Lolly!

Jez said...

LOL! Yes, I do have a love for punctuation, but I try not to take it all too seriously. Being ridiculously conscious of grammar rules at parties doesn't help a girl make friends! hahaha

Thanks for the comment!