Malapropisms and mispronunciations

I’ve been a stickler for language since I was in 7^th grade, which means I’ve one persnickety fuck for decades. I try to tamp down my know-it-all-ness when a friend or relative mangles the mother tongue (luckily I surround myself with really smart people) but nevertheless, I internally cringe when someone busts out a malaprop or mispronounces a word.

There are words and phrase that have been around since the dawn of the OED, or at least since we’ve been alive. It’s harder to forgive the repeated slip of the tongue. That makes me think you just don’t give a rat’s ass.

In junior high, I did a paper on anorexia. I love my mother but to this day, she refers to it as “anorexis nervosis.” I can’t fix this, or her repeated use of “reinerate” (vs. reiterate) and “bookoo bucks." I still haven’t figured out what the eff she means when she breaks out “coup ferré.”

To me, the most oft-misused and ear-bleeding offense is “irregardless.” When I worked at a publishing company, the editors would roll our internal eyes every time the owner threw that out in a meeting. Let me reiterate: I worked at a PUBLISHING company. Dude should have known better. Better yet, dude should have been punched in the face.

And if I hear someone bust out "nuculur," I'm going to mushroom cloud all over them, regardless of whether they were once president.

What language offense most gripes your ass?

(photo: comiccoverage.typepad.com)

Excessive punctuation

[Sorry for the short hiatus, folks. I was traveling and moving but not to worry, I'm back and as cranky as ever.]

I get it!!! I really do!!! Srsly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know you’re excited or scared or confused or slumped over the keyboard so your ear keeps hitting the question mark key. There’s no need to drive home the point by slapping me in the face with punctuation marks or poking me in the eye with those goddamn extraneous exclamation points.

I’m a big advocate of everything in moderation and yep, that applies to my semicolons. Ever since high school, I figured there was a perfect way to express anything through words. Words. Not punctuation. Spend more time conveying what you mean through language, please, and leave those poor, defenseless exclamation marks alone. What did they ever do to you?

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.” Word, Fitz, word. Can you imagine the difference it would make if he had thrown in one or several exclamation points to his otherwise gorgeous WASPy text, such as when Gatsby describes Daisy?

The original: “Her voice is full of money.”
The icky: “Her voice is full of money!!!”

A beautiful observation becomes the sort of squawking, self-congratulatory promise that a Billy Mays ad delivers. Less is more. Period.

(Art: collectingtokens.wordpress.com)

Talking about oneself in the third person

“I’m bored of Bono and I am him—I’m sick of me. I felt it was a little limiting to be in the first person,” Bono has said. I’m sad that I’m limited in the ways that I can punch him in his pompous face.

TIWTPITF’s shit is royally irked when someone starts talking about him or herself in the third person. Politicians like Bob Dole and Joe Biden, and athletes like Shaq and the Rock have been serving up illeisms for a long time. Yeah, I can smell what the Rock is cooking and it smells like dumbass. Remember that dude Suede on Project Runway? Even Michael Kors couldn’t deal with his hubris. Are you royalty? A dead celebrity?

TIWTPITF thinks the only people allowed to refer to themselves in the third person are Steven Hawking, Mr. T, and the Hulk. And oh yeah, Jesus, Buddha, and their pals. That’s it, and even then they are walking a fine line between acceptable and my fist. I have found what I'm looking for, Bono, and it's your face.

(photo: www.bigdogcomic.co.uk)

It’s versus its

I could go on about my disdain for the wrong use of “there,” “they’re,” and “their,” or “hear” and “here,” but what really drives me batshit crazy is the improper use of “its” and “it’s.” There is no reason that it’s confusing. Seriously. If you fuck this up regularly, there is something wrong with you, you had a shitty teacher in junior high, or you just don’t care, which is almost worse. Language is sacred to me. When you mangle “it,” you figuratively shit all over my Strunk & White with your grammatical apathy.

This is all you need to remember: if you can say “it is” instead of “it’s” and it sounds right, then you should use an apostrophe. “It’s” is a contraction and should ONLY ever be used that way.

For example:
It is raining men = It’s raining men = Perfectamundo.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on it’s plain = Just plain wrong.

If you need any further help remembering this, I can go Pavlov on your remedial English ass and inflict a little conditional response with my fist every time you bungle "its" usage. That should remedy the situation, don’t you think?

(Photo: horrormovies.org)