Monday, May 26, 2008

Bad Language: A Pile of Pet Peeves

I nominate these for the worst language abuses of the week.

  • “Can you status us on the email situation?” I could, but now I won't.
  • “Debate's started forming in my head.” Does that mean “debate is” or does something belong to Debate and you've left it out?
  • “For all intensive purposes...” What types of purposes would those be, exactly? Wait, did you mean “intents and purposes”? I should do a post on that phrase. I thank you for the idea, sir.
  • “I know you can't say much, but do you think Mrs. Smith will ever except that she doesn't work here...” I can't even formulate a snarky response to this one, except to point out the the writer meant to ask if Mrs. Smith would accept the fact. Excuse my heavy sigh, please.
  • “Hm...patience is WHO'S virtue?” There's nothing like capitalizing your error to call attention to it. Whose idea was that?
And I hereby propose that this sentence be named “Worst Attempt at Being an Expert, Ever”. It was part of a post on a discussion about commas and punctuation to which I've linked before (and on which I have posted plenty).
“well camas are used a lot, basically use a camma where ever it ruins the flow of the sentence; there us you should use a camma after every pause you hear yourself reading the article.”
Oh! the horror! In case you were confused, "cammas" come from other planets and are alien commas.

Apparently, the rest of the people who posted decided to ignore this little contribution. I couldn't come up with a constructive response, so I'm letting it pass, as well.


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