Sunday, June 23, 2019
More grammarrhoids
From a grammarrhoid writing at Slate:
If you don’t know Postmates, it’s one of those on-demand delivery apps, in the same category as Uber Eats, DoorDash, and so on—you essentially send someone to pick up something (often food) for you. The new ad campaign began in April, and, being a national effort, signage with the slogan now blares across billboards in Los Angeles and the New York City subway. The latter is where I’ve been staring at it for a few weeks now: “Your sweatpants are calling and they want a burger. Postmate it.” In late May, the company launched the second phase of the campaign, national TV ads wherein Martha Stewart intones, “Just Postmate it.” Did you spot the problem yet? “Postmate it” is, I’m sorry to say, a grammatical nightmare. The company name is Postmates, so the verb form should be “Postmates it,” with an s at the end.As always the grammarrhoid misses the point. This isn't a plural, it's a genitive. Most people think of a store or company as belonging to the owner. You hear it often in conversation, and see it in unfiltered online forums like local Facebook pages. I was heading for Kroger's. He works at Safeway's. Kaiser's Aluminum closed down. Postmates fits into this category. The business is implicitly Mr Postmate's company, even though we know there isn't a Mr Postmate. When we verb a noun, we use the nominative, not the genitive. = = = = = Sidenote: It's a little unusual to find a grammarrhoid in "left-wing" publications. Much more typical in Buckley-influenced "right-wing" pubs and TV. Maybe the tendency is spreading now that everyone who writes or talks for a paycheck is required to be neocon. Grammarrhoid = Deepstate. It's a pretty good leth. When up which at the start of a sentence one hears prepositions pile, one can be certain that by a condescending Deepstater down to whom one is being talked. One needs loudly and firmly to shout "OFF WHICH FUCK!"
Labels: Language update, Leth
¶ 5:56 AM
