Fun with Conan the Grammarian

Say hello to my pet, Peeves

1. Alright. I don’t care what the hip new dictionaries say. It ain’t a word. The term is all right. Two words. Period.

2. The limeys have staged a revolt and are putting periods and commas outside of quotation marks, like so:

The article, entitled “How to Shave Your Cat”, has engendered much controversy.

The sentence read, “Gravel and peanuts for supper”.

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero”, says Tyler Durden.

No, no, no! You can see it’s all wrong, those commas and periods hanging out in space all alone, no life preserver, no hope of rescue. Bring them inside quotation marks and out of the weather. You don’t want them to get wet.

3. All the sudden instead of the correct “all of a sudden.” I’ve actually seen this one in print, and it sickens me. “All the sudden” makes no logical sense when you parse it. If it was “all the suddens,” then it would make sense, if suddens were a word. Which it’s not. So cut it out.

4. Two spaces after periods and other ending punctuation. This one went out with leg warmers and skinny ties, folks.

5. Apostrophes used to pluralize words. Don’t even make me say it. I’m not kidding.

6. Chatspeak. I place the blame for this one squarely on the skinny shoulders of the artist formerly known as “the artist formerly known as Prince.”  With song titles like “2gether” and “I Would Die 4 U,” he started the whole numbers-for-words thing. Outside of texting and IMing, there is no call for this nonsense. (And if you text or IM me, I’d appreciate full words and full sentences, thank you.)

7. Alot is not a word.

8. There. Their. They’re. IT’S NOT THAT HARD.

If you’d like to add to list, email me.