Being the Grammar Police

For nearly two years, I’ve written posts about grammar and usage, so clearly it’s a topic that I think is important. Equally important, I think, is knowing when it’s appropriate to insist on proper grammar and how to go about it.

You hear of cases now and then in which people go into public and make a big show of correcting grammatical problems on signage. Take for example this instance that resulted in probation for two men who fixed the grammar on a sign at Grand Canyon National Park. The men in fact went on a nationwide crusade to fix public typos, as documented in an NPR story and a book.

Reruns

Without reruns, I would never have known the joys of Gilligan’s Island and Happy Days, of The Brady Bunch and M*A*S*H. Without reruns of the culinary variety, I’d have to cook every night instead of doing half-labor by cooking a meal planned for two nights. Some things — I’m looking at you, chili — are even better warmed over. So in celebration of reruns, I offer a retrospective of a few posts I’ve written from the past couple of years that I liked, that garnered a fair number of comments, or whose ideas (if not necessarily my particular expression of them) are important.

The Semicolon

Tasked this week with explaining how to properly use a semicolon, I thought immediately of the poster designed by the fellow behind web comic The Oatmeal. He’s done a number of grammar posters, and there’s very little I could add to the explanation he offers. I’ll summarize, but for some colorful examples, be sure to check out his post.

Literally

English usage snobs all over the internet shudder when they hear the word “literally” used to mean its opposite. For example, somebody who claims to have been “literally scared to death” actually means that he was figuratively scared to death. If he had been literally scared to death, he wouldn’t be around to tell us about his fate. Search Google for the simple word “literally” and you’ll find no shortage of sites correcting the misuse. Some fun treatments include that of The Oatmeal (beware, it’s a little off-color) and xkcd.

If Hairs Be Wires, Black Wires Grow on Her Head

You may have heard of the subjunctive mood. You may even be a little bit afraid of it. But did you know that you use it all the time without likely even knowing it? Even as someone who’s pretty familiar with the rules of grammar, I was a little iffy on exactly what the subjunctive mood was. In fact, I was even iffy on what “mood” meant in a grammatical context. So let’s start there.

Metaphor and Simile

Last week, Cheri featured a Freshly Pressed blog and suggested that apt use of metaphor had contributed to the post’s appeal. So I thought I’d take a few minutes to consider metaphor and its figurative cousin simile in a little more detail.

Language is inherently metaphoric in a broad sense, as we use sounds and written symbols as substitutes for items and concepts that exist in the world. It’s little surprise, then, that we’re fond of making further figurative leaps and expressing some of these symbols in terms of others. But there are different ways of making these little leaps, and the two that’re perhaps the most well-known are metaphor and simile.