with common grammatical errors
Published on July 12, 2004 By citahellion In Misc
I am a nitpicky person by nature; I like things to be exactly correct. This is somewhat of a curse when reading stuff written by less persnickety authors who don't have professional editors or proofreaders. Having been involved in online communities for somewhere around 20 years, I have learned to ignore most minor errors. However, there are a few common writing faults that still really irritate me:

1) the overcorrectional "I", or as I like to yell at the screen, "Nominative vs. Objective, you fool!"
This fault is clearly the result of years of being told "It's 'Bob and I,' not 'Bob and me,'" and applying it too liberally.
"Bob and me went to the store" -> Wrong.
"Bob and I went to the store" -> Right.
But,
"Molly rode along with Bob, Frank, and I" -> WRONG! Wrong, wrong, wrong.
"You" are not the subject of this sentence (where the nominative case "I" goes), but the object of the "with" clause (where an objective case "me" goes). The easy way to know which form of pronoun to use is to test the sentence without the other person or people in it with you. Would you say "Molly rode along with I?" (I hope you wouldn't, because then I'd really have to smack you.) Clearly "me" is the correct pronoun in that case; therefore regardless of who else is included in the sentence, when you get to yourself, you should say "me" instead of "I".

2) The improper possessive apostrophe, or "It's not "It's", it's 'its!'"
For some reason, way too many people seem to think that using an apostrophe is the only correct way to denote a third-person possessive. In the case of pronouns, however, an apostrophe is NEVER used. It goes "MY or MINE, YOUR or YOURS, HIS, HER or HERS, ITS, OUR or OURS, and THEIR or THEIRS." No apostrophes at all. It is NOT "You're car", it's "Your car". It is NOT "they're loss", it's "their loss".
People seem to be especially confused in the case of "it's" vs. "its". I will just state for all to see:
"ITS" (with no apostrophe) ALWAYS MEANS "BELONGING TO IT." As in, "what are its properties?"
"IT'S" (with apostrophe) ALWAYS MEANS "IT IS." As in, "It's time to move on to the next item."

3) The improper dash, or "How not to hyphenate."
This one is a bit more esoteric than the first two. Well, okay, it's a lot more esoteric. But be that as it may, it's still not difficult to do correctly. Sometimes people like to include interjections in a sentence. Oftentimes--as with right now--one correct way to punctuate those interjections is with a dash. Specifically, it is with an "em-dash", a dash that is as wide as the letter "m." One should not use hyphen when an em-dash is called for.
The astute reader will probably be thinking, "But I don't have an em-dash on my keyboard!" That is true, and so in order to emulate the em-dash, the correct typographical representation is two hyphens together: "--".
The other thing to consider, however, is that you NEVER put a space on EITHER SIDE of an em-dash. And so if you write something like this:
Bob said - I'm just paraphrasing, by the way - that you should eat s**t and die.
Then you are not just wrong, not even just doubly wrong, but triply wrong, on each occurrance. (no space before, use two hyphens, no space after.)
The simple rule for this case is, If you're not creating a compound word (like "em-dash", "brain-dead" or "half-baked"), use an em-dash, and don't put spaces around it.

4)"They're" vs. "Their" vs. "There", or "Get it right, you buffoon!"
Really, it just isn't that hard. "They're" is short for "They Are." "Their" means "belonging to them." "There" indicates a previously-referenced location.

There are other grammar violations that are also annoying, but those are the top of the list. So if you want to really irk me (and show off your poor writing skills), just say something like
"You're car - it's tires are flat, so you have to ride with John, Frank and I, because their going too."

Comments
on Jul 12, 2004
You are so right! I am often faced with correcting others' documentation. They insist that they have used some of these grammatical items correctly, but I have not come up with such a cogent and concise explanation as you have. Bravo! We have to call our office upon arrival to and departure from a client site. One colleague insists on saying "Foo and myself are leaving the client." For some reason "myself" just grates on my nerves...but I can't explain why that just sounds completely wrong in comparison to "Foo and I are leaving the client." Go figure...
on Jul 12, 2004
Those all bother me as well. I recently sent a long e-mail to a friend explaining the use of I and me. He had a webpage with several photos with captions such as, "A picture of so-and-so and I."
on Jul 13, 2004
I can forgive a writer (to a certain extent) for being wrong, if the incorrect usage is at least consistently applied. But number 5 on my list would probably have to be someone who doesn't care enough about what they're writing to be consistent in their formulations.

Qoo3, I've never had to yell "Nominative vs. Reflexive" before, but feel free to try it out. "Myself" is clearly wrong if you apply the test I gave. if your colleague insists that "Myself is leaving the client" is correct, you have my permission to give him a frontal lobotomy by the use of blunt object trauma.

Anybody have any other common grammatical faults that get on their nerves?
on Sep 06, 2004
citahellion: I have to apologize. I didn't come on the scene here at JU until around a month ago, and so I had not read this article. I didn't mean to repeat something you have already covered (and in a much better and more comprehensive way than I could have). Sorry about that. If it's any consolation, here's a bump!
on Sep 06, 2004
*bookmarks page, titling it "grammar bible hand-out"*

Damn, citahellion, this article was only a couple months late for me to print out and take to class for all my students. Oh, and I'm not allowed to use that kind of language with them, though I sure thought it whilst grading. I don't know exactly why some of those are so difficult to understand, but I think I have an idea, though I won't elaborate on my hypotheses here.
on Sep 06, 2004
Those things drive me crazy. Can we also get people to stop saying "irregardless" and writing sentences with comma splices?
on Sep 06, 2004
Texas Wahine,

Well, shame on you for not perusing every single JU article ever to make sure the topic you were going to post about wasn't already covered! I mean really, the nerve of some people, having the same ideas as me two months later. It's terrible, I tell you., just terrible. I should castigate and ostracize you. Or was that conflagrate and osculate? Constipate and ovulate? Cumulate and obviate?
(wanders off into the distance, muttering. Occasional snippets may be heard, such as "instigate? extirpate? denigrate? inebriate?")



Angloesque,

I'm going to hazard a guess that your idea involves students' stupendous ability to remain obtusely uninformed in the face of instructional clarity.
(Not sure if you noticed, but this article was posted in mid-July, so unless you actually needed it in May it was right on schedule.)
on Sep 06, 2004
By the way, feel free to check out the second in my little grammatical series here....
on Sep 06, 2004
. I did notice the July date, and will check out that next article.