To My Fellow Grammar Nazis….
I wasn’t going to address this but after hearing about it more than a few times I figured I’d put up something. One, I am an English major (I’ll be getting my Bachelor’s in three weeks!) and Two, yes I’m aware the title of this blog was spelled wrong. The correct way to spell the plural of Journeys is sans the apostrophe S. Due to a late night trying to figure out what the hell to name this thing and the unreliability of Google, I accidentally placed an apostrophe S. Hopefully, everyone is happy with the fact that I fixed the error and now our header is spelling error free! I’m not writing this with a jerky intent, I’m personally happy there’s more than a few people who know how to properly use the plural (and thankfully my university doesn’t make me take a grammar test to graduate). Thanks to everyone who sent me comments and emails shaming me into fixing this (jk), hopefully this fix hasn’t propelled you into leaving the blog. Happy reading…and remember to triple check your grammar!
Also before I forget, I’ve removed the Twitter and Facebook widgets from the sidebar to save room. You can now click the handy Facebook/Twitter buttons on top of the header and follow them (I hope you all do!).
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Kristen Lopez View All
A freelance film critic whose work fuels the Rotten Tomatoes meter. I've been published on The Hollywood Reporter, Remezcla, and The Daily Beast. I've been featured in the L.A. Times. I currently run two podcasts, Citizen Dame and Ticklish Business.
Ticklish Business 
I’m much closer to grammar anarchist. My view is as long as what you write effectively conveys the idea that was intended, it is correct. All the grammar rules are theoretically just pointers to try to help accomplish this (or worse, just rules for the sake of rules, looking at you passive voice haters), but that’s the extent of it. Otherwise spelling and grammar are completely arbitrary.
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Well and the rise of “text speak” is making even proper spelling obsolete, so I was just surprised that I was cited for improper apostrophe usage instead of actually writing in coherent sentences haha. Either way, I’m hoping to have fixed my credibility by erasing the error.
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I notice misspellings or typos, but I don’t bother to point them out. I stopped years ago when I realized I couldn’t even count on professional writers to get things correct. Since then the number of mistakes in newspapers, magazines, online articles, and even published books has only increased.
For what it’s worth, I re-read everything I write at least three times before posting it and I still find a mistake every once in a while afterwards. Often it is because I know in my brain what I intended to write, so my eyes do not see what I actually wrote. It’s only after some time has passed and I happen to read a post again that I notice the error. Hell, I just noticed and corrected a typo on a photo caption this morning for a post I made last June.
The fact that I’m actually correcting them instead of leaving them alone shows that it still matters to me how well I come across, even if others don’t notice any difference.
Two pieces of humor related to this:
1. I don’t follow the rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition because the result often sounds artifical and awkward. Winston Churchill made fun of this rule by saying it was something “up with which I will not put.”
2. Years ago I saw a T-shirt that made me laugh a lot, but that I didn’t want to spend money on just for the joke. It had on it, “Does ‘anal-retentive’ have a hyphen?”
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Same here, so many published books have blatant errors. I’ve read some where I’m constantly rolling my eyes and some where there are more than ten in the entire novel! I don’t call to task many bloggers as the many I’ve read are courteous in how they right, I just found it funny the outcry that I didn’t know the apostrophe didn’t go there lol. I definitely need one of those t-shirts.
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Apostrophes don’t bug me too much. The things that irritates me the most are people doing things like using “than” when they mean “then.” I get it when people misspell words, and punctuation is a pretty subjective thing as well…I guess I’m a word choice Nazi then, but that doesn’t sound nearly as threatening.
Bondo, I agree with you about passive voice, though my journalism professors had to beat it out of me.
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I must admit I’ve fallen into the “then/than” hole a few times but I’m getting better. The passive voice is what I’ve had taken out of me in my college time, that and the use of hyperbolic language (“very great,” “pretty amazing”) which I fall into as well.
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Kristen, I meant to stop by earlier, but with being on vacation, I’ve been a bit out of the blog world, so this is the first opportunity I’ve had. Sorry for taking so long to return a visit.
I’ve got to tell you…I am definitely a member of the grammar police. Proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling are no less important than proper math facts. That said, I would never call anyone on the carpet about it…except my kids, because I homeschooled them. However, it actually quite infuriates me to read so-called “professional” literature and find errors in it. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing correctly!!
Interestingly, I was taking an English course last year (going back to school for my English degree), and my teacher’s communication to the class was filled with errors. I really did not feel she was qualified to be teaching an English class, so I complained to the school administration. Sadly and shockingly, they didn’t care. They thought it was no big deal. It was to me…so much so that I withdrew from the university, as I didn’t feel it was providing a quality education.
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Aw Patti, hope you had a nice vacation and thanks for coming back to visit! I get made fun of, and yelled at occasionally by my mom, for critiquing grammar and all my friends/family found it hilarious I was taken to task for my error. I can definitely understand you with the English classes, different teachers focus on different things. I took a Senior Seminar as a requirement for my final year and it was supposed to be on Norse literature (something you definitely need a teacher’s hand with) and she pushed that aside in favor of making us presentations on certain grammar aspects (the proper way to use a dash was one of the most laughable ones). I felt frustrated because we were all seniors, if we don’t know how to write basically we shouldn’t be in the class! I can definitely feel your pain.
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I have been known to make grammar mistakes myself, sometimes big ones and sometimes small ones. What I really appreciate about this post is the admission of it. I don’t mind people correcting my grammar (indeed, I often appreciate it immensely), but it does bother me when people act as if they have never made a mistake themselves, or act as if I am being intentionally sloppy. Even if I proofread something a dozen times, I still find errors when I go back later. Unfortunately, I’m not able to hire a professional editor, and so far none have volunteered to edit all my posts for free and on demand!
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Same here, I appreciated getting the notice but after a kind commenter mentioned that it looked bad with me being an English major I figured I should address it and make the corrections. I think most bloggers try to edit as carefully as possible and even then that doesn’t always work.
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