I can understand and forgive a 4th grader's using grammar and punctuation wrong, but a JOURNALIST?! What were all these journalists doing during 12+ years of English classes? Did they bother to learn the multiplication table in math class?

What were all these journalists doing during 12+ years of English classes? Did they bother to learn the multiplication table in math class?

Maybe we should be glad they were not engaged in an Ebonics class.

I was pretty fair at English. Of course, I had that Chicago accent and living in SW Missouri hasn't affected that yet. I do not have that Ozarks twang in my voice.

When I drove the big truck out of Chicago, they sent me to Milwaukee to pick up a load that delivered six miles south of the Straits of Mackinac. I went north since it was shortest way to the drop. I still remember driving across the Mackinac Bridge at daybreak and seeing the islands in the Straits. It was really beautiful. And that is some good recall after the meningitis took so much of my memory.

I knew this girl who grew up in the north woods of Wisconsin. When I told her I was up there she said, "Don't they talk funny? Hee, hee, hee."

"Eh, you hosers. You drank all the cold ones." LOL

I was good at math class since that Nun in the 5th Grade drilled the arithmetic tables into our heads. I can still do them and then some. ;)

I can understand and forgive a 4th grader's using grammar and punctuation wrong, but a JOURNALIST?!

Maybe they're all HoosierHicks, but don't know about the HH cards.

J/k

Trying to remember if we've ever covered one of the most most annoying stupisms ever -- "painter, William Hogarth" vs "painter William Hogarth". I first started noticing this in the 1980s -- maybe that's when the fad took off? Second-person imperative instances are often hilarious, e.g. with missing 'vocative comma'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Vocative_case

Does anybody ever call you stupid, crazy, drunk or whatever in response to truths put forth, Strate? Happens all the time in my Youtube experience etc -- and ppl almost always make some really dumb writing mistake when calling me dumb. It's such fun, so liberating to smack the churls down >;-}

drunk

I remember when we got the dog drunk on Southern Comfort Alexanders made with ice cream. The poor thing was stumbling. :-/

I remember when we got the dog drunk on Southern Comfort Alexanders made with ice cream. The poor thing was stumbling.

Why the fuck would you do that? That's pretty shitty, man.

I've owned a dozen plus dogs and a half dozen horses [my wife's]. I've never had the inclination to intoxicate them.

That's not funny or cool. When it was time to put our dogs down, Teri and me were with them them when they got the big pink or blue shots, and held them as they died.

Why the fuck would you do that?

I don't know. But it is very old story and with the meningitis I am lucky to recall it. Not looking to use that as a crutch, but anything I can recall from days gone by is a good thing. ;)

A rural friend's duck got high on beer once

I wonder if the duck burped from the beer bubbles. LOL

We haven't talked about the "painter Bob Smith" vs. (I use a period in vs.; you don't?) "painter, Bob Smith" question. What's right to you? With the comma, or without?

"Painter Bob Smith visited the gallery" sounds good to me.

Nowadays the most rebarbative grammatical error I see every day is the use of a plural pronoun for a singular object. That is idiotic and insulting to the reader. And sometimes ambiguous.

"The driver said they didn't see the red light." Ugh! This even when the writer knows the driver's sex. (And even when the driver's sex is unknown, "he" worked just fine in English for 500 years until women started voting and most men were neutered.

"Their girlfriend said they didn't love them anymore."

Somebody got run over. But "the driver said they didn't see them."

Yes, people give me down the road for trying to use the language correctly. I gladly bear that reproach.

A few years ago a company I consult for asked me to read and comment on a draft 3-4 page user's manual for a new product I designed. I found and corrected about 14,000 errors in it. The gal who wrote it was not pleased, and gainsaid some of my corrections, and ignored some others. They haven't asked me to check another user's manual since.

Right on about those pronouns, tho' it does get a bit hazy sometimes. Next question, is it user's manual, users' or users? The latter seems to be quite passable in a number of proper names like Bankers Box, tho' I'm horrified to see THIS:

en.wikipedia.org/wik i/Caesars_Palace

I don't know. But it is very old story and with the meningitis I am lucky to recall it. Not looking to use that as a crutch, but anything I can recall from days gone by is a good thing.

Try to remember this: Silence makes no mistakes.

I'm not pickin' on you Jim, sometimes things are better left unsaid.

Just talkin', Man.

Numbers 1 and 3 work for me. Number 2 can't be right unless there's only one teacher.

For a toothbrush, "user's manual", as there should be only one user.

For a swimming pool, maybe "users' manual".

"User manual" should always work?

"Users manual" risks the ire of the grammar police who will falsely accuse you of intending possessiveness but forgetting the '.

We ARE the grammar police ;)

I found and corrected about 14,000 errors in it. The gal who wrote it was not pleased, and gainsaid some of my corrections, and ignored some others. They haven't asked me to check another user's manual since.

Give 'em more work then they ever thought about and it gets you on the shit list every time. ;)