a short grammar nazi rant
2007-01-31 | 12:22 a.m.

Okay, I'll admit it-

Sometimes, I find it very hard to restrain my urge to be a grammar/spelling Nazi.

I try to be cool about it - it's not like I've never misspelled anything, after all - but some of the mistakes I see are just plain silly. And they bug me.

(For the last time, all eight zillion of you who do this, it's spelled definitely!)

But all of the silly errors in the world, combined, do not piss me off as much as hypercorrection.

The most egregious offenders, in my mind? People who misuse the word whom.

Seriously. The word has all but dropped from the English language at this point. Substituting who will not, in most cases, even be noticed by any but the most anal prescriptivists. If who sounds right to you, it's probably acceptable to most people, even if it's not technically correct. But if you don't really know the rule, and you start sticking whom in all willy-nilly, in some effort to sound smart, you'll just come across as pretentious.

After all, an honest mistake is an honest mistake. Everybody makes 'em. But a mistake that's made because you're trying to puff yourself up and sound smarter? That is severely lame.

So cut it out!

looking back | looking forward