Grammar Geekhood

I never quite realized just how much of a grammar geek I am till I discovered The Vocabula Review, and almost every article and feature seemed to strike a chord with me, and I don’t mean a namby-pamby rock-a-bye-baby softly strummed mandolin chord, I mean a full-on aural assault cock-rock volume 11 power chord.

From The Like Virus (David Grambs):

“The kids and more and more adults seem locked in a kind of cawing hyperpresent tense. Many have strangely unresonant, throat-blocked, or glottal voices and use “up-talk,” the tendency to end all sentences in a rising, questioning inflection.”

YES!! YES!! Oh, he feels my pain!! I am beset by violent and irrational urges whenever I hear many varieties of the American accent, this one in particular.

Other features that elicited similarly orgasmic (if you ignore the “Oh, he feels my pain” bit. I’m not kinky that way.) screams of agreement from me were Grumbling About Grammar, On Dimwitticisms and Clues To Concise Writing.

(Having said all this, it would be hypocritical not to admit that I commit a fair number of grammatical crimes myself. I have problems with semi-colons. I overuse “basically” and “ostensibly”. I often wilfully adopt non-standard methods of writing and sentence construction, and much of the content of this blog will testify to this.)