You know that I think too many people try to catch other people on grammar mistakes and typos. It’s alright (but often rudely done) when the correcter is right. It’s irritating when the correcter is neither right nor wrong (as with omitting or including Oxford commas). And then there’s the hypercorrection, where the correcter really wants to prove their superiority, and just starts making corrections willy-nilly, often miscorrecting perfectly acceptable writing. Here’s a fun example, posted as either a “job LOL” or a “work fail” on Failblog:
OH BOOM! Hey, person who just wanted to keep a common area clean! You and your reasonable request just got served! Scorched Earth LOL!
Except: I count five corrections, of which two are invalid, one is a question of tone, and only two are actually valid complaints. Oh, and there’s a missed correction.
Correction 1: whoever to whomever. See, this is why whom is leaving English. Very few people, even those who want to see it stay in the language, know how to use it correctly (i.e., as the accusative case form of who, not as the formal version of who). Briefly, whom(ever) is used when the noun phrase it’s replacing would be an object of a verb. The wh-word in whoever ate this pizza is replacing a subject NP, which means that it should get nominative case (whoever), not accusative case (whomever). If the clause were “whoever this pizza ate”, then one could add the m. But it is not, and the correction is wrong.
Correction 2: Removing the comma before and. Because this and is joining two verb phrases into a single verb phrase with a single subject, there’s no syntactic reason to have this comma. The comma is also inappropriate from a rhetorical standpoint; a speaker wouldn’t pause before this and. Score 1 for the correcter.
Correction 3: Replacing the comma with a semicolon before you are gross. No, semicolons generally join two complete sentences into a single sentence, and whoever … here isn’t complete.* A comma is indeed correct here; this is an example of left-dislocation, rare in written English but common in spoken English and many other languages**. In left-dislocation, a noun phrase describing the subject or object of the sentence is placed at the beginning of the sentence as the topic of the sentence, and then is referred to later by a pronoun.
Because the specific pronoun here is you, this could also be a case of the whoever phrase being a vocative phrase appended at the beginning of the sentence. Again, this is common in spoken English and shows up often in online comments: e.g., “John, you need to grow up.” If it’s viewed as a vocative, then a comma is again correct. A colon could also be appropriate, as a greeting for the entire message, like the opening to a business letter. Either way, a semicolon is incorrect, and so is the corrector.
Correction 4: Parenthesizing profanity. The corrector claims that there’s no need for profanity. This is an issue of style, and isn’t really right or wrong. In a business setting, like the one this pizza box was apparently found in, written profanity may be inappropriate. However, having been in college recently enough to remember roommates who left empty pizza boxes scattered like lamps around a living room, I would argue that profanity is merited in these cases.
Correction 5: it’s replacing its. That’s a good change. The added rationale, though, should have a colon in place of its comma: need an apostrophe: ITS = possessive.
Missed Correction: the space in who ever. Whoever ought to be a single word here, because it’s the indefinite/generalized form of who, which is standardly written as a single word any more. Who ever would be appropriate if ever were an adverb modifying the verb (e.g., Who ever heard of a snozzberry?). When the correcter added the M, they retained the space, and that’s a missed opportunity to correct.
All in all, this is a microcosm of why I hate people correcting people’s grammar. The correctors are often wrong themselves, and in the course of trying to show up someone else, they completely miss the point — in this case, the undeniable fact that abandoned pizza boxes belong in the trash. Correctors: You’re not helping. And if you’re not helping, you could at least have the decency to be right.
—
*: It could be complete as a question, but here it’s obviously supposed to be a declarative sentence.
**: I first became aware of left-dislocation in French sentences like Mon ami, il est comme un sandwich, and there’s a whole class of languages that regularly do this.
28 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 1, 2010 at 10:59 am
The Ridger
Frankly, I think the “shit” is absolutely called for.
December 1, 2010 at 11:14 am
Tom S. Fox
Why exactly did he think it should be “whomever”?
December 1, 2010 at 11:20 am
Ke$haFan4Ever
omg you used “correcter” and “corrector” interchangeably.
December 1, 2010 at 11:48 am
George Dickerson
Just wanted to say I love your posts. This kind of pedantry really annoys the dickens out of me!
December 1, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Sarah W
The irony is making my head explode.
December 1, 2010 at 2:12 pm
dw
Whoever ought to be a single word here, because it’s the indefinite/generalized form of who, which is standardly written as a single word any more
That “any more” ain’t standard English where I’m from.
December 1, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Gabe
dw: I know. It is where I’m from.
December 1, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Purvis
Your entire post is a bit of a fail, too. You’re a bit of an idiot.
December 1, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Renée A. Schuls-Jacobson
Omigosh, I LOVE this post. As an English Composition Instructor, I am hyper-vigilant about grammar. I think this pizza box would be an awesome lesson plan. I swear I might have to steal this concept and write the whole mess on my own pizza box and see if my students can edit it using their Diana Hacker style books.
Would that constitute plagiarism? How does one cite a pizza box? Tee hee hee!
December 2, 2010 at 12:02 am
Alon
@dw: There is some discussion of positive anymore in this Language Log post. And if you need more, there’s even a Wikipedia article.
Me, I find it quaintly acrolectal, but then I’ve never been to the Midwest.
December 2, 2010 at 4:13 am
Joe Rotheray
The crowd is well behaved,
or
The crowd are well behaved.
Which is correct?
For me the collective noun is a singular reference to the group that is, not are.
Am I old fashioned or incorrect?
December 2, 2010 at 6:12 am
Renée A. Schuls-Jacobson
Joe, you’d better be correct as I just spend 15 weeks teaching Modern Standard English rules to my incoming college students in Comp-101. The Diana Hacker Handbook Update for 2010 says a collective noun singular reference gets a singular verb. (That does not mean we don’t hear it used incorrectly every single day.)
You aren’t old-fashioned. Say it aint so, Joe!
December 2, 2010 at 7:51 am
Joe Rotheray
Thank you for the reply. I brought the question up because I hear so many people make the error, even those who should know better.
An interesting slant on the topic of English and the way in it mutates is provided by Melvyn Bragg in his book, ‘The Adventure of English’. The coverage is from 500 AD to the year 2000.
December 2, 2010 at 7:57 am
Joe Rotheray
Oh dear, I will be in trouble, left out the word ‘which’, second paragraph, first line.
December 2, 2010 at 8:14 am
Kris
I hate to correct anything in this post given the topic. Look at your double asterisk note at the bottom. Did you mean ‘became’ instead of ‘because’?
I would hate for people to mistake a common typo for some kind of grammar error, but you know how people can be. Anyway, feel free to delete this comment after you fix the typo.
December 2, 2010 at 9:11 am
Gabe
The Ridger: Thanks for your agreement.
Purvis: How come?
Alon: I’m not sure what you mean by “quaintly acrolectal”. Do you mean standard in an earlier time period?
Joe/Renée: Correctness on this point depends on where you’re standing. In American English (and Canadian?) collective nouns are standardly syntactically singular (“the crowd is”). But collective nouns in British English tend to be syntactically plural (“the crowd are”). I’m always reminded of this during the World Cup, since even the American stations use British announcers, and they constantly say things like “England are hoping for a goal here.”
You also get plural agreement with morphologically singular team names in American English, so it’s more commonly “The Orlando Magic wear blue unis” than “The Magic wears blue unis”.
Kris: Thanks. I’ve corrected it but left your comment as a reminder not to edit complacently.
December 2, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Anthea
Yes, yes, I like what you’ve said about the text in this photo. I love this post. While I know it’s a bad idea to correct someone’s scrawl …the errors that I see often drive me momentarily bats. People..why can’t they write properly!
December 3, 2010 at 8:37 am
Andrew Godfrey
I am rather perplexed why some of the above commenters are bothering to read an anti-prescriptivist grammar blog! A bit of self-awareness, people?
December 6, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Renée A. Schuls-Jacobson
Gabe: Duly noted. As an American, I, of course, forgot that there might be many different nationalities amongst us. ;-)
Having read EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES, I am aware sf some of the differences between American English and British English. I’ll tell you, it’s a wonder learns any English at all. It is a pretty hard language, filled with exceptions.
December 9, 2010 at 1:25 pm
anon.
@Kei$haFan4Ever: Wow! I noticed that too!
@Purvis: Quit being a pedantic f*cktard!
The use of humorous photos made your post much more engaging.
December 9, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Flesh-eating Dragon
On my list of enemies to eliminate as soon as I conquer the galaxy are people who use the argument from consistency to prove the necessary existence of “whomever” (assuming the existence of “whom”). The argument: “whoever” corresponds to “who”, therefore consistency demands there be a word “whomever” to correspond with “whom”, otherwise chaos.
Not true, of course. In your dialect, “whom” and “whomever” might both still exist as words. In my dialect, “whom” is alive and comfortable in its niche (post-prepositional position) but “whomever” has been extinct so long that if it weren’t for the Internet I’d never have heard of it. For someone else, “whom” and “whomever” alike may exist only in the history books. None of these three options are particularly chaotic.
December 10, 2010 at 8:02 am
sally
Excellent post!! You have quite the talent! You have the marvelous ability to incorporate humor into a subject historically viewed by many as quite dull and boring.
Andrew, I had exactly the same sentiments :)
December 19, 2010 at 8:11 am
Mrs. Apron
Being a recent transplant to the Philadelphia area, the use of “any more” in the meaning of “nowadays” (especially at the beginning of an utterance, as in “Any more, we are mixing up ‘who’ and ‘whom’), has been one of my chief observations. Few people seem aware of it, but I always smile to myself when I hear it. I don’t know how widespread it is. When I lived in Pittsburgh, the “needs done” expression seemed more prevalent, and I don’t recall hearing “any more” in that use.
December 20, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Ke$haFan4Ever
omg do you think you could correct my friend’s grammar in this video??? it’s like way too many for me to do on my own.
December 28, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Adam
Brilliant post. I am glad that I am not doing a PhD in English grammar or I would go mad. However, the fact is that whoever reads the message will definitely get the gist. Hope that is appropriate ;-)
October 11, 2011 at 5:37 pm
monica
Excellent post!! You have quite the talent! You have the marvelous ability to incorporate humor into a subject
Being a recent transplant to the Philadelphia area, the use of “any more” in the meaning of “nowadays” especially at the beginning of an utterance
April 5, 2012 at 7:39 am
“Who to follow” is grammatically fine « Sentence first
[…] or proper: adding -ly to the adverb doubtless, for example, or pluralising ignoramus as ignorami. Motivated Grammar and Language Log have examples with […]
April 9, 2012 at 2:58 pm
Who are you going to believe about whether to use whom? | Bleacher Report – The Writers Blog
[…] who/whom posts on Grammar Girl, Making Words Work (blog title corrected), the Office Grammarian Motivated Grammar, Language Log—and again—and McIntyre […]