Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Grammar

Is there no one left who cares about grammar? About comma splices, colons, and who vs. whom? And the all-important apostrophes (so very rarely used correctly, even on billboards and signs)? And while we're at it, it's "I could NOT care less" not "I could care less"—I can't tell you how many times I've heard that and inwardly cringed. I've even heard it on TV shows and movies!

I know the group of people who honestly care about using correct grammar is rather small, but sometimes, I seriously feel like I'm the only one in the bunch. On Saturday, I went to see "Disney on Ice: Princess Classics" with S and my two sisters-in-law. The play itself was somewhat long, but we had a really fun day overall, especially since we wore princess crowns the whole time. Watching S's face light up at every new thing in the production was well worth it. When asked which part was her favorite, she said, "All of it!"

But back to grammar: During the Snow White segment, the evil queen was doing her bit in front of the magic mirror. At one point, the magic mirror said, "Snow White is more fairer than you."

I immediately looked around to see if anyone else had noticed the grammar snafu. Anyone? Anyone? Just me, then?

*Sigh.* I can't even count on Disney to use correct grammar.


Oh well. At least we looked awesome in our crowns.

6 comments:

The Spendloves said...

I'm not the best grammar person so I can't comment on that. But I see that you ate at Settebello's! Nice!!

Jennifer said...

It definitely sounds/looks wrong to me! Either leave out the more or change fairer to fair? I know I'm guilty of using bad grammer more and more the older I get. I need to take a refresher course or something.

Monica said...

You are the prettiest princess in your crown...you should wear it always!!

oh and I'm horrible with grammar..I get why it bugs you but I'm still horrible!!

Angie said...

I very recently explained (on FB no less) to a friend why the apostrophe in Y'all goes after the y and not after the a. It just bugs me so much. One of my peeves is extraneous quotation marks. Hopefully they're gone now, but when I was at BYU, the ASB doors had painted on their back doors "No Admittance" (or something exclusionary like that) WITH the quotation marks. I always wanted to know whom they were quoting.

But by far the worst use of grammar I've noticed of late was on the show The Good Wife (yes, I know I'm a legal geek). The lead character gets up in open court to talk about the HOA rules and how they connected to whether some kid was guilty of murder and she said that the homeowners were in "complete obeyance" (I'm assuming that's how it's spelled, but since it's a fictitious word, I guess I can choose for myself) Not compliance, not obedience, but obeyance. I'm hoping that the actor just made that one up herself on the fly, because the thought that a professional writer did that is quite disheartening.

It's and its bug me too.

but more fairier--that's awful!

Jules said...

I think S. looks more prettier than you in her crown :).

Dave and Bianca Lisonbee said...

I'm glad you are a grammar nazi. What would our language devolve into without the vigilance of people like you!

P. S. You four are definitely the "more fairer of them all!"