A LOT of people now say or write sentences like this:
Mother gave the cookies to Janie and I".
And dyslexia - a friend just wrote me an email with that "irregardless" "word" !!!
"Irrespective" of the cat and the porch, the person fed will be me, standing next to that free food!
dyslexia, Could you straighten me out on the "could" or "coudn't" care less?
Paola, ever since I became a proofreader, my sweetheart has self-consciously put his pronouns after a preposition in the nominitive case.
I NEVER correct him, but these faulty pronoun references have really got to stop. He holds me accountable for his content, and darn it, I never know who did what to whom or how anybody felt about it!
Phoenix, Honest and truly, ending a sentence with a preposition is no longer a no-no. And splitting an infinitive is no longer a no-no either.
My pet peeve--Just between you and I. They gave a free soda to him and I. <thud, as in falling on the floor>
Phoenix32890 wrote:Quote:"From where are you?"
How 'bout, "Where did you live before you moved here?", or more simply, "Where's your home town?"
Both are better. But that does not change the fact that the Latin rule about prepositions does not apply to English.
Re could or couldn't care less:
I had long hated the "could care less" as I found it was devoid of logic. but then someone gave a interesting logical defence:
"I could care less because I care not at all."
The constant training required to keep up with all the rules of grammar. c.i.
OK.
If you already do not care at all, I posit that you couldn't care less.
If you could care less, it implies you do care somewhat.
Me: Hate I instead of me, as someone here said.
People seem to think 'me' should practically never be used.
"Looking to. . . " as in "I'm looking to buy a car. I will not swear it is incorrect, but grate it does.
Ciao, Paola!
My pet peeve may not be ungrammatical. I am uncomfortable when people use the word graduate with the words high school or college after it; for example, "he graduated high school", or "when I graduate college, I will...".
I think of graduate as a transitive verb meaning to demarcate an object into parts, as to graduate a beaker or cylinder, thereby achieving a graduated cylinder. When I left high school, I graduated from it. Were I to graduate high school, I would divide it into freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years....in my humble opinion.
The New York Times and everybody else on earth now skips the preposition, so
I trust my teeth gnash alone.
In the South, we are in a continous mode of fixing to accomplish things.
"I'm fixin' to beat your ass."
I swear that I does be less irritated by "looking to" than "fixing to".
Living in Texas was my greatest grammatical pet peeve.
c.i. Love your irony!
Craven, duh . . . still lost and I really do care a lot. It was in a recent book I proofread. The copyeditor had changed "could" to "couldn't" and I flagged it for my boss to consider. So . . . which is right after all?
dupre,
That's kinda like asking which of the following sentences is grammatically correct:
One plus one is two.
or
One plus one is three.
IMO it's more of a logic issue than grammar. That being said I'd never use "could".
Lightbulb! I think I've got it. If I couldn't care less, then I care the absolute least there is to care and less is not even an option.
OK. So the copyeditor got it right!
I was confulsed thinking that using "not" and "less" together somehow constitutes a double negative.
Sofia, my sweetheart is always "fixin' to" do something, which is why people always ask him if he's "done yet."
Me and my shadow...... ci
I could care less 