Willam Strunk Junior (1869-1946)
Springtime is a time of renewal and there is no better time to renew your acquaintance with the English language and the subtle intricacies of its proper usage.
Over the course of a long, cold winter it is more than likely that you may have slipped into some bad linguistic habits. Now is the ideal time to get a handle on those. You can start with doing a little bit of a grammar survey. See if you have been indulging in any of the linguistic vices that I have enumerated below.
One grammatical flaw that I have noticed increasing of late is a misuse of the term "literal". No doubt you have encountered this yourself. It is a very common error. One even hears sports commentators, those paragons of televised grammatical virtue, make it.
Let us take, for example, the phrase "he lay on the beach literally drowned." This person actually meant "littorally drowned", meaning to drown on the shore. By writing "literally" he implies that the man drowned on letters! this is certainly a ridiculous notion.
A number of people are sloppy about ending sentences with propositions. It is not correct to say "I am having hotdogs, care for one?" or "My pants are really tight, wanna feel?" both of these constructions are flawed. If you feel the need to make a proposition at least have the decency to make it its own sentence.
Plural subjects are problematic for a lot of people. How do you write or speak a sentence describing your trip to the mall with your friend, Fred? Is it: "Me and Fred went to the mall." "Fred and I went to the mall" or "I and Fred went to the mall"?
The answer is none of the above. There is a tendency when you write a sentence with more than one subject, Fred and you, to skimp on detail. This is no doubt due to the increase in length precipitated by adding "and I" (or whoever) to the sentence but we have no idea how you got to the mall, when it was that you went or why you decided to go there in the first place. Clearly this is no good.
The proper way to write this sentence is: "Fred and I went on the bus to the mall on Tuesday to buy shoes because we had heard there was a sale."
It should be obvious by now that with just a little tweaking your grammar could be so much better than it is now. Remember, bathing suit season is just around the corner and let's face it, you are NOT going to lose those 10 pounds. But people will instantly be attracted to someone who, if a little chunky, has an exemplary grasp on the English language.
So go ahead and have another doughnut but dust off that Strunk and White!
Elwyn Brooks White (1899-1985)