Saturday, June 16, 2012

Red pencil

A longtime reader (and a former editor herself!) writes:
"I LOVE the Grammar Police part of your column, badge included. My son has a theory: grammar, like all things, is evolving, and very soon phrases that were previously considered bad grammar will be acceptable. Example: Me and my mom disagree about the evolution of sentence structure. “Me and ….” is one of my pet grammar peeves, and you hear it so often."
She's right. But there are occasional bright spots. The other day my gym teacher issued the following command: "Now extend the leg toward which you are twisting." Knowing my penchant for correct English, she looked directly at me, and I praised her lavishly (well, as lavishly as I could while doing crunches) for structuring her sentence so that it didn't end with a preposition.

1 comment:

  1. Birmingham TownshipJune 16, 2012 at 5:45 PM

    Your son's theory has actually been accepted by linguists for eons. Languages even change into other languages. Evolution is the only constant in language.

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