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The Baddest Grammer

Entry 357, on 2006-06-28 at 14:44:46 (Rating 2, Comments)

Sometimes there are things I hear on the radio and tv which really annoy me. Of course, the annoyance often involves the content of what is being said, for example "George Bush says we are making good progress in Iraq". But often the annoyance is directed at how the information is delivered. Many people just don't seem to be able to use the English language correctly!

I should make a couple of points here before I give some examples. First, I know English is a difficult language and that its easy to get some of the more obscure words, grammatical conventions, etc wrong. Second, usage changes and what was once considered incorrect is often now acceptable. Third, you can probably find errors in my blog so why should I criticise. Well this blog is written in a very informal style so that's OK, right!

Here's one of my favourites. People use the word literally when they mean figuratively. For example, they will say "the new car literally took off like a rocket". You mean it launched into space vertically from a launching facility? Clearly they don't mean literally here (unless it was a rocket car, and even that would be doubtful). Its often entertaining to imagine what would happen if the event really did happen literally! Today I'm literally like a coiled spring! That goal kick literally went into orbit!

Another problem I have is with the use of the word "unique." People say that something is totally unique, or completely unique. Unique means something which there is only one example of, so something is either unique or it isn't. Is something that's totally unique any more unique than something that's just unique? I guess not. The word unique is often used to mean unusual. The lesser spotted quail is quite unique. That doesn't really mean anything.

Just to be really pedantic I should mention apostrophes. People seem to use them randomly at the end of words ending in s. The rules aren't completely simple, I know, but using them to indicate omission of letters in a word or possession isn't too hard.

If we want to get into to the speaking habits of the semi-literate I could mention some even more heinous crimes, such as double negatives. if someone says "I'm not going to use no Mac's - I'm a PC user!" I usually say welcome to the Mac world. By the way, did you notice my cunning use of the apostrophe there?

I've got to stop this now. I'm sounding like some elderly English teacher, who's too tied up with the trivia of the language and likes to point out the slightest error. Oh wait, there's one more I just heard recently. Its regarding the word "criteria". I know few people study ancient languages now, but they should know a few basic rules about special plural forms. Criteria is already plural OK, the singular is criterion. So saying "we initially had one criteria for selection, but that has grown to 10 criterias now" is horrible. I can just cope with "criterions" as the plural form, but that one really annoyed me!

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