Great article, Laura. I so much agree with everything the author has said. I used to frequent televisionwithoutpity often and always enjoyed Deborah's recaps. And I have read in many, many places that discuss good writing techniques that it is OK to break the rules (some of them, anyway) for style or impact, but before you can break them, you must know them completely.
Wendy - that article much reminds me of a book I have - Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O'conner. Very interesting read, and at the end, she discusses some formerly proper ways of writing/speaking that have actually become obsolete.
My father gets the credit for drilling proper English grammar into my head. My particular favorite was whenever I would ask the question, "Where's it at?" or "Where's she at?" he would tell me "Before the 'at'". That one always stuck with me <g>.
I think that both writing and speaking English properly is even more of a requirement here in America, where we are not generally required by our public school system to learn second and/or third languages. It seems that a vast majority of other highly educated countries do require students to become proficient in a language other than their native tongue (often, ironically, learning English), yet here we maintain the arrogant attitude that our own language is enough.
If we are going to stand behind that vanity, we at least owe it to ourselves and to everyone else to learn and use English well. Nothing grates on my nerves more than to hear people who should know better butcher the English tongue. And while I'm a little bit more forgiving with errors in writing (only a little, mind you), it amazes me how people actually graduate from high school or even college but can't manage to form a coherent sentence.
/me steps off her high horse because she is guilty of making many mistakes in her writing, the whole proper tense situation of "lie" and "lay" being her Achilles heel. But she asks for forgiveness because at least she is trying to learn from her errors <g>.
Lynn
