Monday, November 25, 2013
Now squeeze 2
One of today's AOL-mail fillers is a piece about writing, titled "8 grammar mistakes you should never make." I knew before reading it that it would be only minimally about grammar, but didn't expect such perfect wrongness. The "grammar" "mistakes" are:
(1) Affect, effect
(2) Impact as verb
(3) Their, they're, there
(4) Could care less
(5) Irregardless
(6) Your, you're
(7) Fewer, less
(8) Quotation marks
None of those are grammar problems. Some are spelling confusions, some are word usage errors or stylistic preferences. (2) and (4) are perfectly fine for most readers. Impact has been fully verbed. Could care less, though originally felt as illogical, has been common for a century and no longer stirs attention.
However, the writer of the piece makes one actual grammatical error in the second sentence:
"Many business owners stress about writing anything at all, for fear of using incorrect grammar that will be made fun of across the Web."
Stress is still a transitive verb. Using it intransitively leads to confusion. It may eventually grow into both types of usage, but at this moment the reader expects a direct object after stress, as in "Business owners stress the importance of good grammar."
¶ 3:09 AM 
