Here I am on a Friday night, being all bitter about bad grammar/punctuation, and now that I have a forum in which to share these things, well... You all, my lucky readers, get to hear about it.
First of all, I must say that love that I got an email today that started the rounds online at the end of March. Apparently this article about a Jazz game has been circling the internet for quite some time, and it took one of my very non-basketball-ish friends to forward it to me. (Funny, since I do have friends who follow basketball (and Pres Monson... haha), it surprised me that it took almost a month for me to get this.) Anyhoo... the reason I'm writing this is not on any level to tell ya'll about the fact that Pres Monson is (who knew?!?) a Jazz fan, but rather to get a little gripe out about the accuracy of (or, at the very least, the improper punctuation used by) the mass media. (If one would like to go so far as to call Deseret News "the mass media", that is.)
So, here's my beef. This sentence is annoying me to no end: "Carlos Boozer said he was surprised that President Monson was saying "Hi to everybody."' Really, he was saying "Hi to everybody"? Really? That's what he said, verbatim, he said "Hi to everybody"? Somehow, I doubt it. I'm pretty sure he wasn't saying "Hi to everybody", as in "Hi to everybody, I have no idea how to properly greet people, so I'm going to walk in here and say 'hi to everybody', because I don't know another way to just say hi." Puh-leeze, we don't say "Hi (with or without a capital H) to everybody", we say "Hi", and then maybe follow up with a "How are you?". We just say "Hi" (which is okay to be (and actually should be), a H, since it's a one word sentence that stands alone), and we can say "Hi" to everybody... as in, everybody in the room, in our path, in the gym (or whatever it is that you call the place where basketball is played), but People of Deseret News Staff... you did not need to capitalize the H in "hi", nor did you need the quotation marks here, as that wasn't an actual quote of something Pres Monson said that would merit quotation marks. It was just a comment made by Boozer. Good grief. Must I lecture the entire world on how, when and where to properly use quotation marks? It would seem so... The good news is that it's Friday night and I have nothing else on my plate, so I'm up to the task. (Phew. I know the universe is breathing a collective sigh of relief.)
If any and/or all of you would like to see the trainwreck of unmerited capitalization and quotation marks, not to mention read an article on how the Pres enjoys a good game of ball, serve yourself. The link is below.
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,5143,695265794,00.html
8 comments:
Hey, what were you doing on the internet last night when you could have been at the movies with me??? I was hoping you had a hot date. Let me know if you want to go see Baby Momma sometime this week.
You know how much I love you, right?
And now you have a blog, providing me opportunity to never miss a moment of your pontificating on gross grammar indiscretions. I weep with gratitude.
Sweet header, by the way.
Lizzie ~ I missed your call (the ringer was turned off), but I couldn't have gone anyway, because I had some things I needed to get done last night. Did you go? Assuming that if you did go, you loved it enough to go again, since you're wanting me to let you know if I want to go sometime this week. :)
Jen ~ You know how much I love you (and my sweet header) back, right? :) And speaking of gross grammar pontifications, did you ever hear back from SPOGG regarding your submission? I keep pulling up their blog, hoping to see your contribution. I live in hope of having a Grammar Celebrity as a friend.
Reading your post makes me really nervous to have you reading my blog. Hopefully you will not be too disgusted with my lack of knowledge in the grammar world. Yikes!
Brea, you crack me up... No worries, I can leave most PEOPLE alone - it's when companies advertise with poorly worded logos, or newspapers improperly "quote" the prophet that my hackles raise and I turn into a grammar nazi. I can't think of one single example of bad grammar on your blog - you're safe. :)
Still haven't heard back from Our Friend Martha. As soon as or if I do, you know I'll be blogging about it.
as a creative writer, i say if you understand me, who cares what my grammar is (and i too love gobs of parenthesis). but, a news article, that's totally different. granted, how smart can a journalist be when they take a job that pays less than anything? granted, they do make more money than me, so i shouldn't be so mean.
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