A Bad Week for Grammar

Is it just me, or was it a bad week for grammar?  (Just me??)

Image by succo from Pixabay

It all started near the beginning of the week when I went to my doctor. She has a new assistant. Now I don’t mind if someone working in a medical environment has a big old tattoo (really, I don’t like them, but I am used to it); long thick, big gel nails with one sparkly one (I don’t mind gel nails or colored polish – I have had such nails myself — but when they are long and thick and not nicely rounded and clean looking, I don’t think they belong in a medial environment); and bad grammar to boot. She was very nice and these things wouldn’t have bothered me if she had been competent and hadn’t torn both my ear canals while “power washing” my ears (ever had that done?). So back to the grammar: first was the “have came.” Then was the double negative: “I don’t want no one to slip on that floor.” Grammar isn’t everything, but when other things are going on too, bad grammar doesn’t help.

 

Then, of course, there is the usual “I feel badly,” instead of “I feel bad” that everyone says (including a politician very high up). And then there was the person on cable news who said,  “. . .the amount of people running,” instead of “the number of people running.”

 

Then came the most surprising of all. On a radio show I heard someone whom I thought was well spoken. He has become known through his political tweets.  I had never noticed anything wrong with his grammar until this week when I heard him say “have tooken.” What????? He also said”could of” that same day. And “like myself” instead of “like me,” but that one isn’t so bad.

 

The last faux pas I would like to mention is the “I” instead of “me,” which I keep silent about when my friends say it. I know that when you are talking, you don’t stop to take the other person out to see if it makes sense (He gave it to Pete and I; He gave it to I),  so just remember — if you might be guilty of this — if you are using “to” or “for” or “with” or “by,” it’s me, not I.

 

Yup, I know I was supposed to talk about nouns today as the first post in the parts of speech series, but I just had to vent.