Grammar Police

By Susan Goodsell - Jan 18 , 2010

I meant to start this article earlier, but I was too busy on my Facebook page taking The Ultimate Grammar Quiz. (If you have a Facebook account, click here to take the quiz.)

Got an A+! Yes! Not a surprise, considering my friends call on me to proofread everything from documents to Dear John letters (really) to business emails.

When my daughter was younger, if someone misused a word in our house (such as, “me and my brother went to Disneyland”) we would look at one another and shout “Grammar Police!!” until the offending sentence was said correctly. It didn’t take long for her friends to jump on the grammar police bandwagon and more than a few of their friends were verbally pounced on amid shrieks and laughter.

Now, at 16, she’s much too cool to play that game, but that doesn’t stop her from occasionally correcting her boyfriend’s poor grammar. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

I admit I fill the role of Chief of the Grammar Police and it’s a 24/7 job. One simply cannot turn it on and off at will.

If you gleefully shout, “I do that!” upon reading the following scenarios, then you’re part of the department. Wear your badge proudly.

• You celebrated the 2004 U.S. book release of Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by giving copies to all your friends and business associates, and you secretly feel the author, Lynne Truss, is a long-lost twin separated from you at birth. (Or is it just me? The paternal side of my family is British, after all. Coincidence? Lynne, you know where to find me.)

• Merely walking by a sign in the mall proclaiming “All cd’s and dvd’s now on sale” sends you to Mrs. Fields for some soothing carbs. Or perhaps to Staples for some wite-out for all those misplaced apostrophes. (Come to think of it, even purchasing wite-out is frustrating – why didn’t BIC just name it ‘white-out?’)

• You refuse to shop in the “15 items or less” line at the grocery store because you’re boycotting the sign until it properly reads “fewer.”

• You’re the only one in your circle who sends text messages in grammatically correct sentences with full punctuation. We know that “r u L8 2day?” should never take the place of “You may be running a bit late today due to the rain. Let me know when to expect you.”

• You refuse to walk into a room posting a sign that reads “Parent’s meeting” until they clarify which parent, or do they in fact mean Parents’ meeting, in which case all parents are welcome?

• When you ask a salesclerk how they are and they say, “I’m doing good,” you then ask them if they are helping orphans, working at a soup kitchen, or volunteering some other way in the community. Surely, if they meant “I’m doing well,” they would have answered properly.

• Hearing the word irregardless is like fingernails on a chalkboard to you. Beware the uneducated person who utters this word.

• You recognize the impossibility of a friend who writes, “I’m literally up to my ears in paperwork.” Uhh…sincerely doubt that. She may be metaphorically up to her ears, but “literally” simply cannot be used unless it is true exactly as written.

• You refuse to buy any product that is misspelled on purpose, such as Rice Krispies or Klean Kanteen (I found this product recently when I was looking for reusable water bottles.)

• You use neither spellcheck nor grammar check on your computer. Why would you?

Grammar abuses are rampant. Last year, American Eagle Outfitters was selling a shirt proclaiming, “Love the one your with.” I am flummoxed how something mass produced made it past the designer, the manufacturer, the buyer, the store managers, and onto the chests of our impressionable youth who don’t even realize it’s an error because they themselves don’t know the difference between your and you’re.

It’s an outrage! Why aren’t we writing letters to Congress? Marching on Capitol Hill with our grammatically correct picket signs? Writing concise, perfectly punctuated letters to the editors of our local papers? It’s time to raise our red-pen-holding fists in the air and unite!

But for now, I’m back to Facebook to forward The Ultimate Grammar Quiz to my friends.

Rest easy, America, because the Chief of the Grammar Police and her fellow officers are out there protecting proper usage of the English language—one word at a time!