ANOTHER SMALL HANDFUL OF GRAMMATICAL FLUBS

One or our recent editorial contributions dealt with English language butchery as practiced by an overly massive population segment, despite those never-ceasing schoolmarm efforts to convince pupils to do otherwise. We cited a number of the most common awfulisms uttered virtually every day by that vast array of radio and television spokespersons, whose sworn task really should be to address the viewing public in a proper manner.

Since putting that particular piece to bed, we’ve gone on to note several additional linguistic vulgarizations which we neglected to mention earlier. Again, the key culprits are those TV announcers, performers, and the like, who should have listened more intently to Miss or Sister Pruneface during their classroom years.

Consequently, we’ve chosen to discuss a few other sinful examples, in hopes of encouraging and promoting much-needed improvement, at least among our small reader band.

Mixing Plural with Singular
We’ve long failed to understand why such perfectly correct statements as “This kind of weather upsets me” or “Matters of that sort are none of your business” so often become corrupted when pluralization is required, as follows:
These kind of strawberries are the best.
Those sort of people annoy me.

It’s nothing short of obvious that “kinds” and “sorts” form the correct plurals in each above case.

Except for the convicted Italian anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who used the term “these thing” in his famous last will and testament, we’ve never once heard of any person making a similar mistake when that noun is involved. What, therefore, prompts such mental carelessness with “kind” or “sort”?

Improper Comparison
Simply stated, people or things are always different from each other, whereas than is frequently substituted in error. Correct examples are:
Susan is different from Patty (not than).
Dogs are different from Cats (not than).

It’s rather interesting that “different” seems to be the only adjective wherein such rule applies. In every other comparison which comes to mind, “than” has to be used, as in “bigger”, “smaller”, “older”, “younger”, “fatter”, “thinner”, “nicer”, “meaner”, and so forth.

Adjective Used as Adverb
This point was cited in our previous article, regarding such adjectives as “good”, “bad”, and others being employed as adverbs instead of “well”, “badly”, et al. However, we forgot to mention “real”, per the following illustrations.
Our cook makes real good apple pie.
The people next door are real nice.

Without question, either really or very is required in every such instance.

Preposition Used in Comparison
Most of our readers should be old enough to remember the furor aroused a few decades ago, when a certain tobacco company came forth with the controversial ad slogan “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should”. The hue and cry over substituting “like” for “as” had grammatical perfectionists from coast to coast yelping bloody murder. This fellow actually had some acquaintances who switched to other brands for that reason alone.

What hardly improved the situation was the manufacturer’s feeble public retort “What do you want, good grammar or good taste?” The damage had been done.

Surprisingly, despite the purist feelings of this fellow who’s been devoting paragraph after paragraph deploring spoken improprieties, he never considered the Winston flub as being all that bad, for reasons given immediately below.

A License to Kill
James 007 Bond isn’t the only person empowered to commit homicide with apparent impunity. The same relative privilege exists in the realm of English grammar.

The unwritten rule for those of us linguistically endowed is that “If you know how to say it right, then you’re entitled to say it wrong on special occasions”, thus allowing resort to the vernacular whenever the purpose becomes suitable.

Accordingly, we must offer a personal confession for having once spoken before an assembled civic audience with an address bearing the title Tell It Like It Is. Our recollection is that the talk went over rather well.

Another expression occasionally uttered by this fellow when deemed fitting employs not a double, but a triple, negative, with “Don’t say I never done you no favors”, a personal favorite, notwithstanding the compound rule fracture.

The renowned lyricist Ira Gershwin was once known to become upset upon hearing a girl vocalist belt out the key line of his number as “I’ve got plenty of nothin’”. In his mind, “I got” should forever be the standard version. The man who also wrote “It ain’t necessarily so”, and “Bess, you is my woman now” clearly earned such a rightful claim.

What can we say by way of closing comment other than almost everything has its exceptions, no matter how hard and fast the stated rules, provided the circumstances permit?