Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Happy National Grammar Day!

The good folks at The Society for Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG) have declared March 4th National Grammar Day. In honor of this occasion, I am willing to confess my most horrible offenses.
Offense #1: Blatant abuse of ellipses - I often rely on them when sounding out an idea over email to a co-worker. It's almost as if I want them to hear me say "ummmm."
Offense #2: Running through the sentence stoplight - It seems I simply can't stop going on and on and on and well, on. Perhaps, if I got a ticket for each offense -- I wouldn't hang onto my precious adjectives so dearly.
Offense #3: Overuse of IDK, OMG, TTYL and ROFL - I command thee to stay limited to the Crackberry (oh, and Twitter...oh, and Facebook...oh, there's MySpace...what if I'm just emailing friends? Hmmmm....ummmmm....IDK).
So what are your worst grammar offenses? SPOGG named President George W. Bush as the top offender for his use of the always delightful "childrens." They've also teamed up with MSN Encarta to develop a fun grammar quiz that you can access via their website. No, I am not telling you my score!

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4 Comments:

Blogger Evangeline Holland said...

I use dashes a lot. I have issues with run-on sentences, and have attempted to remedy them with dashes, only to end up with more run-on sentences.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 11:03:00 PM EST  
Blogger Jessica Milne said...

I use double dashes (--) a LOT. I like the dashes long, and though I'm not sure if it's proper or not, I like it.

Same with the ... issue. I find myself tempted to use them a lot in my writing, but refrain.
While chatting with friends... well, that's another story.

Time to go take the grammar quiz! =D

Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 4:06:00 PM EST  
Blogger Unknown said...

I can't believe I missed this yesterday! What a bummer!

My confession is that I have excellent use of grammar in formal settings - informally, however, I'm atrocious. My little sister gets after me about it all the time.

Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 4:49:00 PM EST  
Blogger Jia Gayles said...

Evangeline, I also love dashes! They are so great for dramatic effect, but they can become a bit of a crutch.

Jessica, I have a hard time figuring out how to make an em dash in various apps, so I just use the "--" method also. I'm sure there is a keyboard shortcut, but I just don't know it.

whateverfor, sorry you missed National Grammar Day! Make sure to mark you 2010 calendar. LOL!

Friday, March 6, 2009 at 10:02:00 AM EST  

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