It Makes Me Shutter*

It Makes Me Shutter*

By Maria Lima

Maria Lima is a writing geek with one foot in the real world and the other in the make-believe. Her Blood Lines series (Pocket Books) is set in the Texas Hill Country--a fabulous place for thing that go bump in the night. Maria loves to read, write and watch genre TV and feels very lucky that people actually pay her to do at least one of these things. www.marialima.com

I love the Internet. I mean, really. As in I love it ALOT. I can chat with people in New Zealand just as easily as I do with folks in the next office. I can read articles about Thor's Hammer or peruse newly released World War II era color photographs. I can indulge my easily distracted brain with pretty much anything I want. I can share pictures of my cat, my trip, my book signings, my silliness. Google is my friend and my blog buddies can be my closest confidants. There is no answer that I can't uncover** and Wikipedia is of teh awesome liek woah.

The Internet has brought me amazing friendships, love, laughter, joy. Though in the last few years, it's brought me the absolute and utter amusement of the mangling of the English language--by native speakers. At first, I was beyond incensed, ready to wield the flaming sword of the righteous (is there a patron saint or angel of grammar?).

I'm a writer, damn it, and a total grammar nerd. I mean, I subscribe to the online version of the Chicago Manual of Style, for fun! The topmost item on my ongoing wish list is a subscription to the OED online. With all these amazing resources, how can people be so ignorant of the rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling? Honestly! When the proper usage can be found with a simple search? When in-depth discussions of the Oxford comma take up megapixels of my screen? It's ridiculous!

One day, the answer to my rage occurred to me. Ridiculous became the default keyword in these situations. Instead of getting angry, I could chose to be the other "a" word: amused.

I've gone from wanting to tear my hair out at its gray roots to chuckling over the umpteenth example of homonym abuse and misuse. I don't worry about folks' education or lack thereof. Now, I just wonder at the (sometimes) insanity I see and rest easy in mind that I can take the high road. For every correct phrase, there's another just as heartfelt, but absurdedly worded or spelled. It's become a fun pastime and frankly, I can read posts and comments without my brain exploding. So much nicer that way. So much less stress.

I no longer cringe when I see tips on how to loose weight or that ice cream is the best desert. Characters peaking around the door don't raise my peek, nor do they rein on my parade, but I sometimes still have to reign in my comments. Via a tech loop I belong to, I'm often asked to go sightsee a Web site, but I always make sure my responses and feedback are thoughtful rather then mean. I know that this isn't a conspiracy against my friends and I, but a reel, true and well-meaning group of concerned citizens who just want to be herd.

Yes, I still sigh in vein, but I know that I can't fix this. Some days, I do have to put the breaks on my initial urge to correct, to teach, to educate. I know it would just be a time waist. So I hold back my instinct in a vice-like grip and chuckle. After all, this is the Intarwebs. I try to not let it effect my blood pressure. I'll bear this burden. I'll except this homonym abuse. Instead, I'll continue to rack my brain for better ways of using words in my own books to avoid typo's. I suggest you all do the same, in loo of loosing your cool.

I'd love for you all to share you're own pain...***

'S'alright? 'S'all right. 

* Seen on a blog post reply
** Even if it's wrong

*** I reserve the right to lose it over egregious apostrophe abuse

###

Comments

[Nancy Pickard]

That their is a rite righteous wrant if I ever herd won.

Welcome, Maria!*

*Who is the nicest person, even if she does get homicidal at apostrophic abuse.

[Marie-Reine]

Love your photo, Maria! Really, really fun pic!

I used to struggle with word abuse, because the only writing I'd done - until yesterday, actually - was academic. That doesn't count blogging, though, or emails, or cards, or grocery lists-- okay?

I came to hate academic writing after I had to start using speech-to-text. The spelling errors you produced for this blog had me laughing... mmmm maybe more like crying, because they are the same kind of errors that macSpeech/Dragon makes. And although it does recognize many contextual cues, when it does not, it turns everything to gibberish. I programmed and reprogrammed my voice into macSpeech, and 3,858 hours later it hadn't helped!

Eventually I gave up on speech-to-text, because I found that I could keyboard faster with Ace Paper Tak stuck to the end of a chopstick that I found at the Galleria food court at Children's Hospital in Boston. Originally the chopstick had pink bubblegum on it, but I exchanged that with the Ace Paper Tak when I got back to my office. Now I keep a huge glop of it stuck to the frame of my wheelchair - another great use for the chair aside from mobility. Again, the gum gave me the idea, and the Ace Paper Tak has the added advantage of being blue, the color of my chair.

Anybody who reads my little posts here (and maybe have seen my photo) knows I like blue, but it isn't that I actually like blue all THAT much. I just need to color coordinate with my chair! C'mon.

[Elizabeth, Cambridge, MA]

It drives me INSANE in my online classes where over and over the instructors have warned us to us spell check and yet the spelling is horribly wrong. It is really hard to have an academic discussion with someone online who has issues with grammar and spelling...

Plus my grandmother was a high school English teacher and I was drilled and corrected daily as a child so that I wouldn't be one of "those" people. I read Nancy's sentence up there and almost fell out of my chair until I realized it was a joke...

[Ramona]

In the spirit of sharing the pain...my husband had a student last year who sent a note explaining, and apologizing for, her three weeks of abstinence.

[Margaret Maron]

Maria, here are some I've come across:
Low and behold v. lo and behold
Mental telegraphy
Surrogated spoon
Per capitol v. per capita
Wrapped attention (rapt)
My absolute favorite is "Youth in Asia" for euthanasia. But I collect these and put them in the mouth of one of characters who is a true Malaprop.

[Kathy Reschini Sweeney]

Emily Litella would be proud - I believe she did opine on Youth in Asia at one time - my favorites were Soviet Jewelry and Violins on Television.

I have no problem with short hand online - BUT the growing problem is that many of these kids think they can communicate the same way in the classroom and via e-mail in connection with assignments. Hell, it takes me a full month to convince them that Wikipedia is not a primary source!

[Alan P.]

With this starting the third week of school for my princesses, I would like to point the blame squarely at education majors. I should be glad, at this time last year, with only one teacher, five typos where sent home. This year, two teachers have combined for only three.

The next culprit has to be Microsoft. How is it that the grammar and spell checker have not improved since Word 4.0? Thank you MS, the ribbon bar means I use help because the commands I use every day have moved, but how about being smart enough to point out that I typed four for fore?

Yours, is a lost cause. I once lost the argument that a simulation and assimilation are not the same thing. That assimilation was spelled correctly seemed to be all that mattered.

How about this: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Illustrated-William-Strunk/dp/0143112724/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283087770&sr=8-1 I like it, but it is not a good bed time story for the little girls.

[KarinNH]

Ah, one of the things that amuses me most on the Internet is that those who do choose to "wield the flaming sword of the righteous" to correct others' grammar mistakes almost always make an error in their correction. It is as if the gods of irony and humility are up there laughing like crazy. I like to mutter "Hoist? Meet petard!"

Having taught a college grammar course and seen how seldom the so-called experts agree on the rules and how often the rules change, I keep my lips zipped. (The exception to that is if I am being paid to correct someone's grammar or if it is one of my children. Those two groups get no free pass!)

[Karen in Ohio]

Ah,you are all like-minded readers/writers/editors. It's lovely to be in the company of others who shudder at the sight of such awful spelling and misunderstanding of the most basic rules of grammar.

Bill Bryson has a pretty good book of commonly misused words and phrases, but even he missed some, there are so many.
http://www.amazon.com/Brysons-Dictionary-Troublesome-Words-Bryson/dp/0767910427

[Karen in Ohio]

Oh, yeah, Alan, my daughters' teachers' missives also all too often contained typos and misspellings. Which was a good clue for me to double up on the girls' education by supplementing at home.

[Rita Scott]

I feel your payne!

[KD Easley]

I love this Alot!

[Holly Gault]

Ooooooooooh.
I recognize several homonymous errors I've made without realizing. Oops. Yet I get my panties in a twist if someone uses the wrong pronoun in a prepositional phrase. Yikes.

I haven't achieved your switch from annoyance to amusement. I think I should work on that, but at least I've stopped acting as the Wrong Pronoun In A Prepositional Phrase Police.

[Gayle Carline]

First of all, don't ever go to the Cakewrecks website - what the cake decorators in this country do to spelling, apostrophes and quotation marks will surely drive you mad. Second, I try not to be too anal about grammar and spelling, but if I see "then" used as "than" one more time, I may just go postal. It's becoming so common I fear it will become the rule instead of the error. I'd like people to know the difference between "its" and "it's", too, if it's not too much to ask.

[TheLima]

You all are cracking me up! I did just spend about a half hour reading comments on a blog post (elsewhere) and keep wanting to smack the clue bat of grammar down...then subsided back into the amusement phase.

@Marie-Reine thanks re: my photo!

@Ramona - abstinence? Hee!! I bet your hubby howled at that one.

@Margaret - that's a great idea - reusing these. I especially love "Youth in Asia".

@Holly, mine was a long road from annoyance to amusement. You'll get there. :)

[Kerry]

Ah, grammar! Spelling! Punctuation! I miss them so. I've been a college teacher for, um, (subtract the 8, borrow the 1, carry? no, that's not right) never mind. Over 20 years anyway. I'm happy when a student can produce a grammatically correct sentence, overjoyed when s/he can write a coherent paragraph with a clear topic sentence, and ecstatic when citations are correctly formatted.

None of those things happens nearly often enough.

Sigh.

[Marie-Reine]

I have to ask the writers reading this blog if you have a writing style that aims at the standards of the Chicago Manual of Style - or any other such manual. The reason I ask is that I have found that I don't always enjoy reading perfectly-composed fiction. I become more involved with a story when the author's language reflects feelings-- their own or that of their characters.

[Margaret Maron]

Marie-Reine - I do aim for correctness when writing 3rd person omniscient author, but if I'm behind the eyes of a 3rd person character ("close 3rd person") or writing 1st person, then I go more for colloquial and colorful -- which gets me lots of letters about not knowing correct English.

[Beth]

I will henceforth try to be as patient as you are, Maria, instead of refusing to order from a menu that offers ceasar salad and rueben sandwiches. :-)

[Nancy Pickard]

"Ah, grammar! Spelling! Punctuation! I miss them so."

Kerry, lol! There are too few semi-colons in the world to suit me.

[storyteller Mary]

ooh, I guess I'll apologize for my abstinence also . . .
I used to assign my junior high students to find published errors, correct them, and bring them to class. We had a section of the bulletin board for their finds . . .
Apostrophe abuse is so rampant that one of my colleagues declared it "the death throes of the apostrophe," and I'm beginning to sense the same desperation in the use of nominative/objective pronouns. They may finally be confused to death.
I did make a firm stand against texting shorthand in students' papers, taking extra points off the papers of those who used the single letter "u" for the second person pronoun.
I like the "amused" stance, but there are some authors' books I will no longer read because of egregious errors. Editing is a sign of respect to the reader, and while a few errors can be overlooked . . .

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Oh, luv it!

I am still bugged by "old-fashion ice tea."

But my producer is a wonderful Mrs. Malaprop--the other day, talking about lunch, she said: "I can't wait! It'll be the carrot at the end of the tunnel."

It's apparently catching: The other day, I said: "Well, that sure let the can of worms out of the bag."

We have interns transcribing our videotaped interviews, and sometimes the logs are fantastic. A grandmother describing a young boy as her "Son and air." And that she was leaving him her delicate collection of "mice in China."

[storyteller Mary]

Margaret, you are in good company -- Mark Twain's narrator vs. character dialect . . . Shakespeare's nobles vs. rude menials . . . the precedent is established.

I used to tell Shakespeare students that I wouldn't trust someone to make a Caesar salad if he or she couldn't spell it properly. (Oh, my fingers wanted to type "they" -- we really need a singular non-gender-specific pronoun . . .)

[Kellee]

OMG! Love this! Since I work in a world of speakers, not writers, and live in the south, I get to hear the equivilent. Who knew 'groin' was pronounced 'gro-in'?

[TheLima]

OMG, Hank - menus, yes, indeed! Makes me crazy. ::g::

@Kellee, I nearly came up out of my chair during a jury voir dire when the attorney mangled the pronunciation (voyuer dyer) - ACK!! I was one of the possible jury pool at the time (this was in Texas).

[Elaine Viets]

"It is. It is. That's what it's stands for. That is the only time you are allowed use an apostrophe for its."
Oh, Maria, the nuns drilled that lesson into my head, but the world is full of blatant apostrophe abuse.

[Harley]

I hereby apologize for the past 3 years of abstinence. I didn't realize I was being rude to all of you. Thank you, Ramona, for that.

And as for loosing weight, I don't need anything else on my body to be looser.

Maria, you are a girl after my own heart and your amusement-rather-than-angry-brain-explosions tactic can be used in so many areas in life.

[gaylin in vancouver]

I am with Harley, I don't know if I need to loose any weight. I just keep reading when I come across typos online, that is, once I have figured out what it says.

I love going to Cakewrecks and reading what decorators write on the top of cakes.

[Kerry]

Nancy, I adore semicolons! My love affair began in 9th grade, when an otherwise abysmal English teacher made each of select one punctuation mark and learn to use it correctly. Thus far, the pinnacle of my achievement came during my (college) freshman history class when we were assigned our first essay. Our TA treated us to a minor rant about how freshmen couldn't write and how, to avoid problems, we should write like Hemingway, with lots of short, declarative sentences.

Well, I didn't like Hemingway. Moreover, I was at the time also taking an Honors Comparative Literature class that required a writing exam and fluency in at least one language other than English for admission. Plus, I'm Irish. Thanks to that 9th grade teacher, my introductory paragraph was 1/2 page long and consisted of precisely 3 perfectly grammatical, perfectly punctuated sentences.

I was very proud of myself :) Only now I'm wondering how I wrote all of the above without a single semi-colon.

[Jerry House]

I read your post with baited breath.

[Ramona]

Cake Wrecks! I love Cake Wrecks. It's sorta like the Madonna Inn, on a cake.

[JimF]

The panda eats shoots and leaves.
The panda eats, shoots, and leaves.

Even my 6th graders begin to see the importance of a comma when they draw pictures of those two sentences.

The sentence is from the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss.

[Marie]

I love "The Elements of Style"..keep it handy at all times.
When I studied French Authors and French Grammar I always excelled in French since I spoke it as a child.
My girls are good writers and love literature also.
Maria, your novels look like great fun.
I am looking forward to picking your new book and you seem like you have a great deal of fun in life.

[Marie-Reine]

Thanks, Maria... some great laughs and good to know different views on the matter, as well.

Margaret M. - thank you for your input on how you choose when to use "colorful" and "correct" language. I am struggling with style for myself. Too many years an academic! It was all laid out just so-- very dry with no life.

[Bev]

A few months ago, I applied for an instructor position at one of the local colleges. I was also a student there at the time. My rejection letter came from the Dean of the college and had 4 misspelled words and a glaring grammatical error. Yesterday, I received my an e-mail with the agenda for my grad school class. The instructor who has a PHD, mind you and the agenda contains several grammatical errors and missing a day of instructions. A little while later that day, the instructor sends an e-mail acknowledging her error and the e-mail has several misspelled words. All I could think of is "I'm taking a class from this person? You got to be kidding!"

[Avis]

I used to be pretty pedantic about grammar and spelling. Now, I try to remember that language constantly changes. Some of the things we believe are the "right" way were in fact changes from their original usage, but before our time.

For example, I get all hung up on people using "celibate" to mean "chaste" or "abstinent". The word originally meant "unmarried". In French, that's what the word still means (célibataire). I'm especially irked when a married person talks about being celibate. But... language changes.

Kids have always loved having their own secret language. I can forgive the "leetspeak" and texting abbreviations as long as I can understand their meaning. When I don't know what they mean, I just say so, and no one has ever refused to spell it out for me. :-)

I have to admit it bothers me when someone writes "draw" for "drawer". :-)

[Shelley]

Kellee, did you mean to misspell equivalent? I live in the south too.