The Things Up With Which I Will Not Put

Unlike the person who originally said this (although long attributed to Winston Churchill, he was sarcastically paraphrasing the already-sarcastic original), I have no problem with sentences ending with prepositions. It’s an old, musty rule that has no place in modern spoken English. As we’ve discussed, language changes. Sometimes old rules don’t apply to new language. According to writer Dan Nosowitz, this wasn’t even a real rule; it all started with the poet and playwright John Dryden (known to be a very unlikable character), who, in the 17^th century stated that he thought ending sentences with prepositions was “inelegant.” No reason.  So, some jerk of a pedant four hundred years ago decides he doesn’t like something, and we’ve all had to live with such nonsense ever since.

Many of the traditional grammar rules have fallen by the wayside in our speech. We, do, for example, split infinitives with total abandon and don’t care at all who knows it. We decided a long time ago to boldly go into that final frontier.  And we start sentences with conjunctions.  Which sometimes create acceptable and interesting sentence fragments.

All true. However, I don’t want you to get the impression that I have limitless tolerance when it comes to language use. Far from it. I mock and ridicule language pedants, yet I can be one as soon as I let down my guard. As a “language person,” I’ve always had to be careful not to act too bristly at others’ speech. To use a legal term, I wouldn’t want my own language obsessions to have a chilling effect on others’ conversation. But, as one of my favorite memes says, I am silently judging you on your grammar. At least on some things. And maybe not so silently.

Like most people, there are linguistic transgressions that I dislike, but tolerate. There are others that are so commonly despised, there’s no point in my discussing them (although a future discussion of apostrophe use might be in order). Some, I’ve grown so accustomed to that I’ve grown numb. It feels like yesterday, for example, that I visibly cringed when I heard the words impact or parent as verbs. Now? Doesn’t faze me a bit. Some errors are so grievous, I’ll have to discuss them in detail at another time. Probably when we’re all in better moods post plague.

Today, I’d like to discuss just a few of the things that are common and ordinary to many people but the verbal equivalent of fingernails being run slowly along an old chalkboard to me. They make me want to scream. They are rarely important enough to affect communication (usually, the benchmark), but they make me daydream about performing Clockwork Orange-style behavior modification on the speaker or writer.

The first one is when someone tells me they feel badly about a situation. It’s all I can do to hold myself back because, most of the time, I think THEY think they’re being correct and formal. Look, we have bad and we have badly. Two words, two parts of speech, two functions. All words that end in -ly are NOT adverbs (that’s right, contrary to what we were told in GRAMMAR school!), but when they ARE adverbs, they indicate manner—the way in which something is done. It describes an action (a VERB). English has TWO meanings of feel, one an action and one not (a sense). The one that’s NOT is the one in I feel so bad that I had to tell Mirabella that her pet ocelot was not permitted on the bus. The one that IS would be in Ever since my unfortunate accident that burned off my finger tips, I’ve been feeling badly. Okay, that last one is an unlikely usage, I agree, but maybe that’s the point. How about the analogous case of another word that is both a sense and an action: smell. In the SENSE, we have the sentence The dog, who recently rolled around in dead bird, smells really bad. In the ACTION, we have The poor old dog who had nose surgery has to be shown where his food is because he smells badly. See? It’s easy.

Another one that irks me is because, again, I think the speaker/writer is trying to be “proper” (I HATE that word!). Overuse of I is easy to trace. Most of us were corrected as children and told to use I and not me in many situations. True, but not ALL situations for heaven’s sake! I is the subject (actor) in a sentence; me is the object (the acted UPON) in a sentence. Parents and teachers rightly chastise us when we say Me and Cossette are going out. Of course, that’s incorrect. The test is clear and easy: take away the other person, and you end up with Me are going out. Even if you substitute is you’re never going to have a good sentence. So, all the good children took this to heart and, apparently, forgot we have another pronoun, me. Every day, whether it’s in person or on TV or in a movie, we are assaulted with such sentences as Oh, that was such a joyous celebration for Syl and I. Our childhood correctors are still living in our heads, screaming IT’S ‘I,’ NOT ‘ME’, causing this horror to occur again and again. Same test, my friends! Oh, that was such a joyous celebration for I. Really? Nope. Semi-related is another monstrosity that I’ve observed: I’s as in An amazing event occurred in Fetzger and I’s meeting. It’s only used when there are two possessors, but why?  An amazing event occurred in I’s meeting? Never. What IS that? It is nothing and should be sent back through the hell gate that admitted it.

I have no problem with eliminating whom from the English language. For decades, the “threat” (hah! No one would care!) of losing the who/whom distinction has been dangled before us. That little rascal keeps hanging on though. I also have no problem with using whom. It’s an easy rule, and I’d be happy to share it if anyone had an interest. What bothers me, however, is yet another case of people trying to sound “proper” or intelligent and GETTING IT WRONG! Two rules to always follow: don’t try to use whom if you don’t know how and don’t try to use a semicolon if you don’t know how. The result appears as exactly the opposite of intelligent! You might come up with something similar to what I recently saw in an online ad: Do you wonder whom will be shopping here? Well, no, me do not wonder that! Please just stop.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of using antiquated relics, please don’t use the word whilst in my presence. That’s a request to anyone living in the 21^st century, but, especially if you live in the United States. Really, this is a serious request.

I’m a little on the fence with the lie/lay distinction. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I do silently judge anyone who misuses these, but I also understand how difficult the distinction can be. It was obviously someone’s cosmically cruel joke to make lay the past tense of lie (an intransitive verb that does not take an object) while making laid the past tense of lay (a transitive verb that DOES require an object). So, we could conceive a sentence such as I told my pet chicken to lie down while she was laying an egg. Or My pet chicken lay down while she laid an egg. Or Please lay those pillows down on the bed before you go to lie down on the pillows. So I try not to get too judgy with this because it’s so cruel. It’s interesting that the mistake never occurs in reverse; we hear I have to lay down every day, but we never hear Please lie that stiletto on the table. I should tell you that I once had to quit a dog training class because the trainer insisted on teaching my dog to lay down. I just couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bring myself to use the command, and I didn’t want to confuse my poor pup. I should also mention at this point that the grammar check function did not flag the above lie/lay misuses. Apparently, even Microsoft Word is confused by these.

There are numerous others. As well, there are common expressions that I just can’t stand. But, I’ve already revealed enough of my language obsession for one day, so maybe another time. I won’t lay to you, it felt really good to lie it all out like that. I realize, however, that many of these are just I’s problem.