Biloxxxi's Woodshed

“When I split an infinitive, Goddamn it, I split it so it stays split.”
-Raymond Chandler

Well said, Mr. Chandler, but I’ve got no idea what a split infinitive is, and neither does most of my audience.  That being said, good grammar is like good food, a hot pocket might get the job done, but it’s sure not a t-bone. Through the popularity of text-messaging and the goat-screw that is Twitter, our grammatical prowess as a society has sunk like a lead balloon. Here are a few of the things that bug me the most…

Text-message speak outside of text-messages – Quick, how much longer does it take to type out “your” than” ur” on your computer keyboard? Not long at all. Let’s not even get into the confusion that arises from using “ur.” Actually, let’s get into it. Are you referring to the word “your?” Like “your cat?” Or are you referring to “you’re?” Like “You’re cat?” In which case I respond with, “Your face is a cat. Hoe.” The bottomline is this, text-messages are limited to 160 characters, most other things are not. Use your words, big guy, don’t make me pull out the Enigma Machine to understand your Facebook post.

Spelling – This bugs me to no end. I was the 1996 DeKalb County Spelling Bee Champion, spelling is yet another forte in my repertoire. But even still, it amazes me how little care people put into correct spelling. Almost everything has spell check now, Mozilla, Google, whatever. That’s what that red line is under the words. (There are currently none in my article.) Another thing that pisses me off is when the spelling of words is changed in an attempt to “modernize” them. A quick story: A few weeks ago some friends and I were riding down the Connector and passed Atlantic Station. There was a sign up for an exhibition called “Dialog in the Dark.” Something just didn’t look right to me about that. We rode a few miles further and I randomly shouted out, “They spelled dialog wrong! It’s D-I-A-L-O-G-U-E, not D-I-A-L-O-G!” I was then informed that that is the new spelling by my teacher friends. “Bullshit!” I said. “I didn’t risk life and limb to win that DeKalb County Spelling Bee just so they could change the spelling of words because they’re too ignorant to learn the correct spelling!” My argument fell on deaf ears.

9/10 of the population won't get this

Proper usage of “a” vs. “an” – This should be easy. There’s a rule for when to use “a” and when to use “an.”  Use ”a” when the first letter of the following word is consonant, use “an” when the first letter of the following word is a vowel. It’s one of those things that you can let slide in an e-mail or some informal writing, but whenever I see it in a sign or perhaps a hat, I’m amazed that it made it through quality control. Seriously, somebody at the factory must know how to speak English, right?

Use of the word “Irregardless” – Irregardless is not a word. If you use this word, you are an idiot. The credit manager at my work used this while giving me a lecture, and it completely negated his entire argument. I quit listening to him while I considered ways to break it to him that his point was invalid. In the end his status as manager won out, but I still quit listening. I’m like a barracuda, something shiny caught my eye.

Use of the word “is” in Facebook Status Updates – A couple of years ago when Facebook first introduced status updates, “is” automatically followed your name, so you had to use it, as in “Biloxi is awesome.” After a bit of complaining, they made the “is” optional. It took awhile for people to figure that out, so you got some really odd sounding status updates, like “Jane is believing in miracles,” rather than “Jane believes in miracles.” Recently, Facebook went with the Twitter style status updates where you could write whatever you wanted, but for some stupid reason, people still use “is” like the old days. Why go out of your way to be stupid? It’s like getting busted for meth use during a random drug test, filing a lawsuit and winning, and then getting busted for meth use again during a subsequent random test. You stole one from the devil, don’t try it again.

I’m sure there are other things that bug me, but I’m in a fairly good mood today, so that’ll about do it. Anything I missed?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Treatises on Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.