Who knew grammar was a fandom?

[nonelvis]

I could have lived without the ableist insults, but the rest of this secret gets a big, fat HELL, YES from me. (Note that this is not my secret, but the original, TB!4 in this post, was too hard to read even at 100%, so I enlarged it.)

ETA: I should have added that the language used is NSFW, and that some people may find it offensive.

Comments

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

TEE HEE

[nonelvis]

I feel like I should print and frame it.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

DO EET

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

I can't see it, because I don't have a flickr account. I are sad.

[nonelvis]

Try it now. I had the viewing preferences set to "moderate" due to the language in the secret, but have changed that and added a note in the description instead.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

That made me so happy, I can't even tell you.

[bunny42.livejournal.com]

Icon love!

[bunny42.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you've seen the "alot" posters over at Hyperbole and a Half, but have you seen this (http://maiyamayhem.blogspot.com/2010/06/alot-of-fun.html)?

I don't even know most of those stitches, but I'm going to try to learn them.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen them, actually! I love the idea of an alot being a creature!

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

Nice icon. But if you ever drive down to visit NYC on I-87, you will see that it is officially the "New York Thruway." I guess it's ok as a proper name, but it still bugs me a little.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

Luckily I don't drive, so this has never been an issue for me. But proper names are different in any case, and I'll bet it was spelled that way to save space on the sign.

nonelvis will probably remember this: On one of the other boards we belong to, there was a woman (Lola? Lolita?) who used to write "site" and "lite" and "thru" and shit like that, and it drove everyone on the board crazy. No matter how many times she was corrected and asked not to do it, she would keep it up. She claimed they were accepted spellings because she had seen them in print. Eventually the boardrunner wrote a script so that every time she used one of those words, they would be replaced with "It's spelled L-I-G-H-T, Lola. LIGHT not LITE!" (depending on the word she used, of course).

I think she got banned eventually.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

Things like "lite" came into the language as an effort to trademark them -- you can't trademark an actual common word. So we get LiteBrite or Lite Beer, which Miller Brewing trademarked.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but she was claiming that they were OK to use in everyday English. It drove people NUTS.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but she was claiming that they were OK to use in everyday English, because it was an "alternate" spelling.

(I don't know about in the US, but in Canada, the food industry is only allowed to use the word "Light" if the product is significantly lower in calories or fat than the original product. Companies get around that by using "Lite" instead.)

[nonelvis]

Lola! She was awful, and she did get the well-deserved banhammer.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

She got banned for stuff other than her appalling spelling, but I think that was icing on the cake.

[alphabetically.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten about that! HA. That was hilarious.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

Hey! It's you! I am totally friending the hell out of you right now, if you don't mind!

(I'm Heather C on TUS, in case it wasn't obvious)

[alphabetically.livejournal.com]

It wasn't! I looked at your profile to see if I could tell, and sadly I could not. Thanks for letting me know!

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

I used to have another icon as my default, and I think it's the same one I used to use on TUS. But I have run out of room for icons, so I deleted it from my list. I will probably bring it back into rotation later.

[editrx.livejournal.com]

YES, YES, YES, YES, YES!

I SAY AGAIN: YES!!

God, I wish I'd made that, myself. Whoever did clearly lives in my brain.

[nonelvis]

It's a thing of beauty.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

I have some students who could use that, but I'd get fired if I gave it to them.

The one that's missing, which is really the worst, is "its," "it's," and -- God help me -- "its'."

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

That makes me irrationally angry. I hate the its/it's confusion. But I especially hate -'s as pluralization. It makes my blood boil.

Luckily, I am in a position to break that bad habit before it starts. I am an ESL teacher, and I tell my students that the apostrophe is for contractions and possession only. It's never for pluralization.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

Mine, unfortunately, have already had 16 years of US education (except for the occasional Canadian or ESL students, who usually don't have that problem, but can have others), so it's next to impossible to drill it out of them. I tell them not to use the apostrophe shotgun -- you know, the one that randomly fires apostrophes into their papers. I also suggest that if they know they have a problem with apostrophes -- as indicated by the BIG RED CIRCLES I put around them -- they should do a search for every apostrophe in their papers during the editing stage and reflect on each one.

[syzygy-lj.livejournal.com]

Tell them for every erroneous apostrophe you see, you'll deduct a mark. You'll be surprised how quickly they disappear.

It worked in my high school English class, anyway. There were grumblings, but the teacher told the class that he was there to teach them how to use the language, so they could learn to do it right or fail.

[nonelvis]

No, it's in there -- kind of, anyway. "It's means 'it fucking is,' as in 'it's amazing how fucking stupid you are.'"

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

"Its" and "it's" are, but not "its'," which is what makes me crazy.

[stick-poker.livejournal.com]

The description of the comma in particular made me laugh distressingly loudly.

[nonelvis]

The one about the apostrophe not meaning "here come's an s" is what kills me every time, but the whole thing is damned funny.