Category: Grammar Nazism

Actually, a multitude thereof, and all in the same article.

Mulcahy, pictured, was only trialed in 2000 when Duffy confessed he had been his accomplice.

FFS, it’s not enough that “trialed” is now being used as a replacement for “tested”;  now these illiterate assholes are using it instead of “tried” (in the judicial  sense)?

It doesn’t end there:

From there, the police started to look for a man with a A blood type…

You mean “the” A blood type, of course.

To add insult to injury [sic] , there’s this:

“The other thing, and we’ve never made this public, is that a tourniquet was used”

Ahem.  A tourniquet is a stopgap medical device to cut off massive bleeding in a wounded limb;  a garotte is looped around the neck and tightened by turning a stick or piece of metal as a means of strangulation.

And their description of the murder weapon:

They thought that [the piece of wood] been used as an accelerator to burn the body. It wasn’t. It was used act fallen out of the knot that had been used to strangle Maartje.

Right now, I am not allowed to visit Britishland, which is probably A Good Thing.  There would be murders at the Daily Mail offices, perhaps even by garotte (which would be fitting).

Gah.  Where’s the Sipsmith?

Oy.  Once again, the bludde boileth overre.  Guess why?  Never mind, it’s the Daily Mail again.

PICTURED: Moment Kaley Cuoco’s stunt double is RAN OVER by a car

Give me a minute while I get a fresh cup of coffee.

I’ve ranted before about the Brit tendency to misuse tenses, e.g. “he was sat there” instead of “he was sitting there”, and now we have the latest manifestation, using “ran” instead of “run”.

In this case, the problem stems from fucking illiteracy  ignorance of what is being omitted from the sentence:  “…stunt double is (being) run over by a car.”  Clearly, saying “stunt double is being ran over by a car” jars the senses — or maybe it doesn’t, in the post-grammatical world we now find ourselves in.

Just for the record, “ran” in this example is a transitive past-tense verb, i.e. “the car ran over the stunt double” (although it really should have run over both the writer and editor of this article).  Similarly, it can be used without an object (“the boy ran away”) unless it’s used in a different sense (the man ran the company — i.e. managed the company).

Of all the times to run out of fuel for my flamethrower…

I’ve got three gripes today.  The first is from Gun Digest, who seem to have succumbed to the “let SpelChek do the editing”, with this gem:

At the bear minimum, it’s novel.

…and no, it wasn’t a pun, because the gun under discussion was a .22 Mag rifle.  B-A-R-E.  And in the same article, by the way, we find for a bonus:

Also, it’s receiver is drilled an tapped.

I-T-S nofuckinghyphenapostrophe, and if you’re going to get all folksy and elide the conjunction, it would read “…drilled an’ tapped” (perhaps move the offending hyphen from “it’s” and just put it after the an?).  Otherwise, despite SpelChek giving it the okay, it is spelled A-N-D.

Next up is the Daily Mail, (a.k.a. Illiteracy Central) and it’s a classic case of turning a noun into a verb (a.k.a. “verbing”):

“Summited”?  Seriously?

There are actually two quibbles about this silliness.  FIrstly, “summit” has been egregiously and unnecessarily turned into a verb.  Secondly, even if you’re going to “verb” this noun, at least recognize that as spelled, it would be pronounced “sum-my-ted” — to shorten the letter “i” requires a double consonant afterwards, e.g. “submitted”, “admitted”, etc.

Right.  After pouring myself a second breakfast gin, I promptly spat it all over the keyboard when an old foe reared its horrible head.  This came from Steve Kruiser at PJMedia (who really should know better):

“I’m not concussed, I’m not hallucinating, I just tend to look at most things differently than other people.”

One more time:  it’s “differently FROM other people”, FFS.  “From” is what’s known as tadaa!  a differentiator — e.g. one house differs FROM another in that it has a green roof, not a red one.  (Try saying the previous sentence using “than” instead of “from”, and see how ridiculous it sounds.  Welcome to my world.)

The word “than” is comparative — taller than, longer than, sillier than, etc.

I know it can be confusing.  Here’s another example to help show the concept:

“Michael Phelps differs from Danny DeVito in that he’s much taller than the diminutive actor.”

Note how using the phrase “differs from” makes it a far more elegant expression than (see what I did there?) “Michael Phelps is different from Danny DeVito…”

It’s really quite simple, like most grammar rules.  Which is why when they’re broken, I want to reach for the 1911 and ventilate the screen.  Or the writer.