The Grammar Nazi Is Becoming Twitchy

I have always excelled at grammar in school. Things like punctuation are important to me. Yeh, I'm a total geek like that. And it bugs me to no end when I see people butchering the English language in print. (Okay, it bothers me to hear it be butchered in speech as well, but I'll save that rant for another day.)

While at the mall today, I saw a vehicle with a memoir on the back window. I know you've seen those, too. They read something like, "In Memory Of Little Bill, 1967-2009." My beef with today's car was the lack of grammar. It boldly declared, "Ride On Chris, 1977-2010."

People, a comma makes a huge difference. H-U-G-E. I mean, "Ride On, Chris" is a nice sentiment to remember someone who was a go-getter in life. But "Ride On Chris" is something that makes for awkward explaining to small children.

We will not even begin to talk about the capitalization of all the words.

Benches are placed along the bike trail that I love so much, and the majority of them have been donated by families in memory of someone they love. There are a lot of "In Memory of's," but the ones that irk me are the inappropriate quotations. This is the correct use of quotations:

In Memory of William "Bill" Murray
But things like:

"In Memory of Mary Burke"
"A Beloved Sister, Friend, Aunt"
makes me twitchy. Was she really beloved? Is it really in her memory? How can one tell with all those quotation marks? And really, I can't be twitchy while biking because I'm not that great of a biker yet.

People, grammar makes a huge difference. Is it asking too much to simply follow the rules?

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5 comments:

Anglophile Football Fanatic said...

I'm still dying a bit inside at that truck: If its too loud your to old. Let's see what's missing: 1 comma, and the correct uses of the words you're and too. OY VEY! I'm not a grammar nazi, but that makes me shudder and clench my insides in agony.

Eternal Sunshine said...

This makes me think of the sign on Pinterest that says

Let's eat Grandpa

Let's eat, Grandpa

I giggle every time I see it.

the planet of janet said...

I love you. The end.
Signed, the grammar nazi

Roger Miller said...

Glad to see that we're in good company. I am writing this in fear of making a mistake, by the way.

Gina said...

I don't know what happened to grammar. When I was in school, we HAD to learn it. And if you wrote an essay or answered a question on a test - even if it wasn't in English class - you got points off for bad grammar/spelling, etc. Now, I see TEACHERS writing stuff of facebook like "your welcome" It's frustrating!

And while there are a few grammar rules that are obscure and hard to learn, most are pretty easy. My 3rd grade teacher taught us a bunch of shortcuts to remember things like I vs me, who vs whom, desert vs dessert and I still remember them.