I figured I should have a Friday rant too, so here is something that drives me nuts. It never fails, I will be reading a comment on a message board, usually but not limited to the Star Beacon's, and the person will actually make sense about an issue that I may believe the opposite about. Then it happens, somewhere in the post is the word, "ALOT". This is where I group the person with the rest of the illiterate dummies who type "is" when they mean "are" and vice-versa. I am not a journalist, nor a gymnast, that's Rob's department, but come on you are an adult and its 4 letters get it right! (Okay so 3 conjunctions in one sentence won't help me win a Pulitzer either)If you still don't know what I'm talking about sorry, but you are one of these people, that's alright though because I'm going to end the confusion for you right now. More importantly I will keep it from happening again. In high school one of my favorite teachers, Terry Murcko, helped the entire class with this problem. He had grown tired of reading the word "ALOT" in our writing, so finally he took a piece of paper wrote "ALOT" on it, tore the A off taped it on above the left corner of the chalkboard, then took the LOT and taped it above the right corner. From that day forth I never made that mistake again. I actually emailed Mr. Murcko today, after reading "alot" one too many times, I thought maybe if I thanked him I could purge my soul of the anger I have for these people.
A -----------------------------------LOT
I also invited him to check out ASO, so we'll see what happens...I know it sure puts a lot of pressure on me; writing this and thinking about him grading it.
***Going Dark- I am leaving to go out of town for the weekend, visiting Karen's Parent's, hanging out with fellow bloggers Rob and Terry, and going to Mattie's first meet since December. I now have a DVD video camera so look for a video post of Mattie competing by... Tuesday. There now the pressure is on to learn how to do all this video transfering/editing/publishing crap.
Have a good weekend, see ya on the flip flop!
4 comments:
LOL-- Spuncie, I was hoping you would never bring this up. Hehe, I often feel like posting edits to your posts, and if you don't think I can find at least 5 wrong usages in the last 10 or 15 posts, you are crazy. But I do agree with you, and when I grade my students' papers, and though I assign little value to spelling and grammar in my course, it drives me batty. Just throw in "most" instead of "alot" and you are usually good. Kudos to Spuncie, the bestest postar in the whirld.
I realize my grammar is far from perfect, but this is just something that has been on my mind and gnawing at my core. I cath them too Roni, sometimes I'll go back and read a post that hasn't been on the front page in weeks, catch a mistake, and edit it. Honestly though, if I spent any more time fussing about this blog I'm going to get divorced.
Can you give me Karen's #? It's not for me, but I have some good looking and thin friends.
No you don't
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