Saturday, March 15, 2008

Grammar Natzi

I try not correct other people's grammar (unless I know them well), I try to give the benefit of the doubt to misspellings on emails, signs, etc. Maybe English isn't their native language, and to be fair it is a hard language to learn. I always read my writing 2 or 3 times to check for grammar and slip ups that spell check doesn't catch. But my biggest pet peeve (hell who am I kidding, like I only have 1. HA!) is when people can't get it right between contractions and possessives. If you own it, it's your's, if you belong to someone then you're theirs. It's not that hard. So imagine my disgust (delight while showing it off and taking its picture) when I saw this, AT THE STORE NO LESS!!What the hell? How did this get past quality control, was there even a quality control inspection? Did they just say "Oh well, fuck it. No one will notice." How does this happen? Is this what happens when the President "leaves no child behind"? Instead of moving everyone up and improving everyone's skills we bring everyone down to the lowest's level? This is unacceptable. I know it's just a pillow, but it goes beyond that. How can we be a strong powerful nation producing world leaders who are going to make a differnce when we can't even get the pillow right?

3 comments:

Lushorama said...

hahahhaa - what's going on, two posts in the same week???? I know what you mean though, the "your/you're" thing really gets me....as does the 'they're/there/their" one....hehehehe...off to update MY blog now, YOU'RE putting me to shame....
Lisa
x

Unknown said...

Did you bother to turn it over to check for country of origin? It was likely made in another country were English is not a native language.

International Scarf Exchange said...

Hi there - found you via the ISE6 blog...

Lol. We've got the same problems over here in the UK so you're not alone!

TBH, you lost me at 'contractions' and 'possessives' so God knows where that leaves me and I like to think of myself as fairly well educated!! There is a definite weakness in Education this side of the pond when it comes to grammar.

I can guarantee you that over 80% of my friends & family wouldn't know what 'contractions' & 'possessives' mean (just like me). But I can guarantee you that 100% of my Spanish friends who learned to speak English as a second language would know!

Maybe as English speaking nations we're lazy and take it for granted. It's a shame because even the schools don't seem to bother correcting such basic mistakes anymore.

One of my pet peeves is something the locals say. They have this awful habit of saying 'I seen such and such on the TV last night' rather than 'I saw'. My poor husband must be sick to death of me correcting him all the time, especially now as our daughter says it too!! Eugh!

I'm not innocent either. As you'll no doubt have seen, I tend to use 'I' too much, and also exclamation marks!!! My poor primary school teacher did try to correct this but I never could get out of the habit!

Happy knitting & enjoy ISE6

Craftybernie
http://www.craftybernie.blogspot.com