Grammar for Dummies

Ever heard the expression "Physician, heal thyself"? The general meaning is, "get it right yourself before telling others how to do it." When the in-house grammar curmudgeon at the Antisocial Network happened upon  "Common Grammar Misconceptions" over at InfoBarrel.com, he was tempted to shout, "Morales, edit thyself!" Is there nothing so pathetic as supposed grammar advice that's full of grammatical errors? We don't think so...

For the most part, morales (no first name, no middle initial) gets the gist of what he calls "misconceptions" correct, although we think "misconceptions" is the wrong word. After all, there are billions of bytes written about the difference between "your" and "you're" or "whose" and "who's," so it's not difficult to find something to copy, rewrite, and paste with the help of your favorite search engine. Where morales goes off the rails is his (her? who knows) delivery, such as this tasty bit:

"...when you write mails, business reports or blogs, your identity as a user or a good English should be driven into the mind of the reader..."

Ouch: "driven into the mind"? that's gonna leave a mark! And no one who writes a phrase like "a user or a good English" has the slightest room to correct the grammar of someone else! But wait, there's more:

"It is right to say, you are on time and not you’re on time. But you say it right, when you declare that you’re going to be the class topper this time."

What's wrong with saying, "You're on time"? We don't get it -- is this bozo trying to say that contractions are bad? We also don't get just what the hell he (or she) is writing about with "Since or far: These propositions are often mismatched. We hear people saying, she was not around since past four or five years. Sounds odd, isn’t it? " We're quite sure neither "since" nor "far" is a proposition. "Far" isn't a preposition, either -- and WTF would "mismatched" mean in this context? And we're pretty sure we've never heard someone say "not around since past four or five years." What language is this character speaking, anyway? And, of course, he closes out his "advice" with the truly hilarious, "The teacher rightly asks, who’s is the class leader?"

Ummm, no. No, that's not right... not rightly, either. Morales only "wrote" one article for InfoBarrel: too bad, because with garbage like this one we're pretty sure he'd have been a perennial candidate for the Antisocial Network's fabled Dumbass of the Day award!

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