Some people tend to get a little grumpy about the proper use of the English language. There are enough of us that damned near all word-processing software now includes not only spell-checking, but also real-time grammar-checking. Sadly, though, the spelling part's apparently a lost cause... Back to the topic of grammar: there's nothing that elicits an outpouring of schadenfruede in our house grammar curmudgeon quite like seeing purported grammar advice that itself violates grammatical rules. Take this, for instance, from someone calling herself Fiona Rey, "writing" about the perils of missing commas for the readers of DailyTwoCents.com:
¹ This website is now defunct, but you can see the post using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was dailytwocents.com/punctuation-marks-important-instance-commas-can-save-lives/
"Punctuation mark is very important. By just using a comma, you were able to save the poor grandpa’s life." I'm going to guess that sweet young Fiona, a nice "Canadian" girl (yeah, sure) didn't read all of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Ya think? as the kids say... Of course, I wasn't really expecting a lot of high-quality advice (and I use that word loosely) from this particular specimen of grammatical excellence, given that the title of her little piece is itself a run-on sentence: "Punctuation Marks Are Important, for Instance, Commas Can Save Lives." Should we say, "Physician: heal thyself"? Yeah: like we're going to take "grammer advise" from this Dumbass of the Day. Just like we're going to take hair-care advice from Donald Trump. |
¹ This website is now defunct, but you can see the post using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was dailytwocents.com/punctuation-marks-important-instance-commas-can-save-lives/
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