Southern Accents for Dummy Freelancers

Different Southern Dialects

The Antisocial Network's researchers come across some pretty cockamamie statements as they wander the 'net looking for freelance dumbassery. A lot of what they bring up at staff meetings bogus "facts," incorrect "instructions," the occasional idiotic conspiracy theory, and just plain old stupidity. We think today's DotD nominee falls in a couple of categories: it's mostly bogus facts, but it has a pretty strong stench of plain old stupidity. Feast your eyes, y'all, on the Edward Ngureco post at HubPages.com, "Accent and Dialect: Formation of Dialects - and Why Southerners Have Accents."

English for the Dummy Client (Seekyt Week 4)

Tracking corrections in MS Word

"Physician heal thyself!" may have originally been a literal suggestion to Jesus Christ (Luke 4:23), but these days its use is rather snarkier. It means something along the lines of "don't criticize others for what you do yourself." Perhaps the more accurate Biblical quotation would be something about motes and beams... Today's dumbass, courtesy of the truly moronic site Seekyt.com, is one Victoria Trix ("real" name Victoria Carella? publishing under the pseudonym "Trixxie," perhaps out of shame?) We caught the lovely Victoria lecturing her potential clients about whom they should hire for freelancing jobs (why, it's her of course!) in "Benefits of an English Speaking Writer vs. Non-English Speaking Writers."

Of course, according to Trixxie, English-speaking writers are better than non-English-speaking writers. That makes sense, since anything you write in a language you don't speak at all will probably end up total gibberish. So what Trixxie probably means is "non-native English speakers"; though we can't be sure. But let's face it: Trixxie is definitely a dumbass for having written this balderdash:

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:

Sic for Dummies

How to use "sic"

"Do as I say, not as I do" is the unofficial motto of the internet, doncha think? It's especially true of a certain subset of grammar cops - you know, the ones whose advice is to "be sure to check your grammer and speling"... The Antisocial Network's house grammar curmudgeon (yes, we have one) always finds that error irresistible. Of course, it's not the only bad grammar advice out there: check out some of the dumbassery contained in the "answers" to a HubPages.com user who had a question about errors in quoted material. The original questioner asked, 

Writing Tips from a Dummy ESL Student

Dumbass of the Day number 50 (yea, Team Dumbass!) comes to us from the wide, wonderful world of "Do as I say, not as I do." It also comes from a website widely known for its exemplary writing – NOT – by which we mean Seekyt.com, compliments of a member who calls himself ishrabatool. What a tool.  Ishra's topic is "Few Steps of Essay Writing," a title that by all itself is a hint of what you'd see if you ventured to read it. We wouldn't, if we were you. It just might make your eyes bleed. These samples ought to suffice...

Consider ishrabatool's introductory paragraph:

Bad Grammar Advice from a Dummy Who Failed ESL

Nothing chaps the collective hiney of the Antisocial Network's staff grammar curmudgeons quite like the people who offer grammar advice chock full of grammatical mistakes, spelling the topic "grammer" and similar sins. Oh, sure, there are descriptivists and prescriptivists in the grammar game, but we're pretty certain both of them would head for the nearest vomitorium upon reading the sort of crap someone calling himself (herself) Nitin Gupta penned for HubPages.com under the title "Tips on How to use good punctuation and grammar in essay or letter Writing."¹ This may well be the worst grammar advice in the history of the internet - and that's saying a lot! 

Take, for instance, Gupta's first paragraph: 

Bad "Grammer Advise" from Dummies

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: