I'm a sucker for good grammar books. I mean, I love learning about the little quirks of our language. When a bookseller at the Virginia Festival of the Book suggested that I would like Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies, I promptly bought a copy. Furthermore, I couldn't wait to dig in!
Wouldn't you know, I learned something right away. I was taught that the abbreviated form of the word "until" is "'til." But it's not. It's "till." I thought that "till" was another word for cash register. Even stranger, it turns out that "until" is derived from "till" and not the other way around. Motivated Grammar offers a wonderful discourse on this.
And yes, if you look hard enough, you'll find titles like Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour.
One of my pet peeves is misuse of the objective and subjective case. Yet you hear and read it all the time. For example, this week's issue of People magazine quotes Emily Maynard as saying, "Well, he just saw Brad and I together, and he just started crying." She was explaining what happened after her dad met Brad Womack, the man who proposed to her on the Bachelor.
But it could have been because Emily misused the word "I." She should have said, "Well, he just saw Brad and me together, and he just started crying."
Frankly, I think the folks at People should have been generous enough to fix that little slip-up. Of course, there's an easy test for a problem like that--split up the sentence. I bet Emily would never say, "Well, he just saw I, and he just started crying." (I'll admit that running these tests in your head can turn your conversation into a series of halting stammers.)
I'm not perfect when it comes to grammar. Far from it. However, I hope to improve--and books like this can help a lot. (Not alot.)
Meanwhile, I'm happy to read that people often say "doggy-dog" for "dog-eat-dog" and "tow the line" for "toe the line." Where I grew up in Southern Indiana, I thought folks were saying, "It's a hard row to toe." Actually, they probably meant, "It's a hard row to hoe." But something got lost in the translation.
I definitely grew up hearing the term "widder woman," meaning a widow.
How about you? Are you a grammar geek, too?
