My Gramma and Your Gramma Sitting By The Fire

(April 30, 2001)

There are days when my mood is so very surly that the same things that mildly irked me, say, yesterday, get me downright incensed.

Today it's Bad Grammar sticking in my craw. I am officially in a bad mood, and I will not be apologizing for this rant later. I'm serious. I won't. I may even go so far as to invite everyone to bite me, see if I don't.

What really bakes my noodle is the fact that, through a little thing called Common Usage, some of the worst grammar is making its way into dictionaries. If you just clutched your head and yelled "Noooooooo!" I'm sorry to ruin your day by saying, "Oh yes. It's true, Cookielips." Don't be surprised at all if your Strunk and White (2025 Edition) tells you "...for reason's probably relating to an inadequate and weak-willed educational system, primarily in North America, the use of contraction's isnt quite it's old self. Purists are surprised at how accepted the random inclusion and altogether missing apostrophe's have become..."

Take myriad. I used to love this word. Myriad is a darling little word meaning numerous or innumerable or many or countless. You can't say "She is faced with a myriad of choices" any more than you can say "She is faced with a countless of choices." NOW, much to my chagrin, through Common Usage it's OKAY to say "a myriad of." A professional copy editor acquaintance of mine confirmed this. We'll call her Pam, because that's her name. Pam is twelve years my senior and has personally witnessed the decline of myriad. Come to my house, we'll light a candle mourning the Dead Adjective Myriad. (sniffle) I'll miss Myriad. Myriad was good to me. (*see addendum below)

It gives me hives to even consider the dreaded irregardless. Hives, I tell you. If this disaster of a word comes into acceptance through Common Usage, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to handle it. Say "regardless." Say "irrespective." But please don't come to me with "irregardless" anymore.

Wanna call me a loser? Fine, but it's loser, not looser. Though "looser" isn't exactly a compliment, either. Oh, and notice how it's compliment, not complement?

And for god's sake, there's no such thing as a point being. It's just a point. If you've explained something in such a ramshackle way that you must point out your point by saying "My point being..." then PLEASE don't add an is. Or just say "My point is..." The BEING and the IS do the same thing for the sentence so can ya just pick one? I know, I'm harping on this one, but I swear, I get the "My point being is..." at least once a week. (Be warned: if I hear this phrase, chances are I stop listening. It is therefore pointless to try to get me interested in your fabulous point being).

Incorrect use of literally. Do not wonder why I looked that look at you when you told me, "It's literally raining cats and dogs." It is NOT. That would be ASTONISHING. And likely followed by the birth of a MESSIAH of some sort.

A crazymaker is pointing out irony where there isn't any. Alanis Morrissette did not invent the concept of irony. If you must, six years later, use "Isn't it ironic doncha think" in everyday conversation, at least stick to using it about something ironic. If I happen to run into you at the corner market, that's not ironic, that's simply what happened. At most it's a coincidence. If we live on the same street, there's even less to it than that. It certainly lacks irony. Unless I've been carefully avoiding you all week by pretending I'm on vacation and have one more day left before I'm "back" but I've taken the risk of going to the corner market thinking it'd be such a long shot to run into you there and am in the middle of telling the clerk about my ruse and my relief and then I turn around and you're standing right behind me. Now THAT'S ironic. Doncha think?

*Addendum July 15, 2001: Look what I found in the Amercian Heritage Book of Usage.
myriad. Throughout most of its history in English, myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the early 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both uses in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge�s �Myriad myriads of lives.� The poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word murias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or as an adjective, but the noun murias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective murias was used only in poetry.