The Burden Of Caring About Proper Grammar-It’s Not An Easy Life
Me is in some big trouble!
Now, that I have your attention…
And trust me, I know I have your attention.
Because nothing, I mean nothing, gets the email flowing from you, Dear Reader, than when I make a grammatical mistake in this column.
Well, the dog columns get a lot of love, but we’ll play with you, Fellow Dog Crazy, another week.
For now, it is my duty, my responsibility to repent.
Forgive me, Dear Reader, for I have grammatically sinned.
Perhaps, you caught my inexcusable flub.
It popped up in a column a couple weeks ago where I wrote about sequels.
How I’m almost always disappointed when I pick up a book that follows a personal favorite.
Such was the case with the book I was reading.
Still, I shared, I was determined to finish out the main character’s story.
In what must surely have been a moment grammatical amnesia, I wrote, “But I’m in, so we’re going to see this through, her and I.
Yep.
Her and I.
Never have three short words pushed so many over the literary cliff.
Your critiques came flooding in with all the subtlety of cat who slipped in a bathtub.
“…we’re going to see this through, ‘HER AND I’ Really?! Public needs you to set/keep standard!” chastised one reader.
“What’s with this ‘her and I? Seeing it way too often,” tsked tsked another.
Thank goodness I wasn’t within arms length of you and your rulers.
I would have no knuckles left.
The thing is, I get it.
The screech of nails on a chalkboard.
The ice cube terrorizing your sensitive molar.
The agony of a misused word.
I’m actually one of you.
Present error excluded, of course.
I care about grammar.
A lot.
“Grammaracarians” you might call us.
It’s not an easy life.
To walk among those who don’t know the difference between who and whom.
Whose and who’s.
Which and that.
And my personal pet peeve, fewer vs. less.
That’s why I didn’t fight back when you caught me.
Hands went straight up in the air.
Took my hands off the column-writing wheel and stepped away from my laptop very slowly.
I told you I could’ve defended myself with the notion that this column is supposed to be conversational.
But why mess with that silliness?
I goofed.
My standing down was enough for most you.
Then, there was that one Dear Reader who grew even more alarmed by response.
“Conversational?” she slammed on the brakes. “Please tell me you don’t TALK like that!”
“Hey, I live with two teenagers,” I explained. “I’m lucky most days if I can talk in complete sentences.”
For purposes of this column, I will try to remember my “outdoor voice,” and clean things up in this space we share each week.
And if I do goof up, don’t think of me as lazy.
Rather lonely.
Missing you.
Knowing you, Dear Grammaricarian, you aint wasting a second to drop me a line.
