A WRITER'S WIT
One thing I know is that it is a bad idea to marry someone who had bad parents. If they hated their mother, if they were hated by their mother or father, your marriage will pay for it in ways both obvious and subtle. When the chips are down, when someone is sick or loses their job or gets scared, the old patterns will kick in and he will treat you the way he treated his mother or the way she treated him.
Ellen Gilchrist
Born February 20, 1935
A Dictionary of Errors
When Porter Cresswell thinks of the vast number of mistakes that we speakers of English make each and every day of the year—for how can we help it, we’re only human, after all—there are a few that stick in his craw like a toothpick caught crossways in his throat. And he writes a letter to the editor of his local newspaper. Online, no less.
Dear Fellow Citizens,
You would do well to recall that grammar books are written based on usage. Yes, through the long lineage of our language, crafters of such books have discarded that which no longer works (thee and thou, for example) and accepted or transformed a former mistake into something that is now acceptable usage. Over time, after humans insist on melting the “h” out of a certain word or making one agree with a verb that it didn’t in the beginning, the writers of the Great Grammar Book of Inviolate Rules often acquiesce to the hoi polloi . . . and change the rule. Still, I think we should uphold certain rules of grammar, as long as we can.
I or Thou. I hear people of all ages violate this inviolate rule, but mostly it is the young, and such usage is appalling. Appalling, I tell you!
Me and my friends went to the store.
Yack!
Me and coach decided I should pass the ball off instead of trying to take the entire game on my back.
What makes either of these sentences unacceptable is that the speaker has chosen to use the wrong pronoun, indeed the wrong type of pronoun. Me is an object pronoun. Not in a million years can it really serve as the subject of a sentence (well, we could wait around and see). One can put it before the verb and pretend, but no no no, I protest. Me cannot ever be the subject of the sentence. I is the subject pronoun one wishes to use.
My friends (to be polite) and I went to the store.
Coach and I decided (equally) that I should pass the ball off instead of trying to take the entire game on my back.
The rule is so simple. I performs the action; only me can take it up the you know what. (Or is it Only I can take it . . .?)
FRIDAY: END OF PORTER CRESSWELL'S "Dictionary of Errors" RANT
Dear Fellow Citizens,
You would do well to recall that grammar books are written based on usage. Yes, through the long lineage of our language, crafters of such books have discarded that which no longer works (thee and thou, for example) and accepted or transformed a former mistake into something that is now acceptable usage. Over time, after humans insist on melting the “h” out of a certain word or making one agree with a verb that it didn’t in the beginning, the writers of the Great Grammar Book of Inviolate Rules often acquiesce to the hoi polloi . . . and change the rule. Still, I think we should uphold certain rules of grammar, as long as we can.
I or Thou. I hear people of all ages violate this inviolate rule, but mostly it is the young, and such usage is appalling. Appalling, I tell you!
Me and my friends went to the store.
Yack!
Me and coach decided I should pass the ball off instead of trying to take the entire game on my back.
What makes either of these sentences unacceptable is that the speaker has chosen to use the wrong pronoun, indeed the wrong type of pronoun. Me is an object pronoun. Not in a million years can it really serve as the subject of a sentence (well, we could wait around and see). One can put it before the verb and pretend, but no no no, I protest. Me cannot ever be the subject of the sentence. I is the subject pronoun one wishes to use.
My friends (to be polite) and I went to the store.
Coach and I decided (equally) that I should pass the ball off instead of trying to take the entire game on my back.
The rule is so simple. I performs the action; only me can take it up the you know what. (Or is it Only I can take it . . .?)
FRIDAY: END OF PORTER CRESSWELL'S "Dictionary of Errors" RANT
See Ken Dixon's most recent post at kendixonartblog.com. In it he talks about his latest show at the William Campbell Gallery in Fort Worth. Exciting stuff!
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