Following up on yesterday’s post, if we don’t call someone who is strict about grammar a “Grammar Nazi”, what do we call them?
If you have other suggestions, feel free to add them below. (Bet you can’t guess which one is my favourite 😉 )
an exercise in percussive maintenance
if all else fails...use a hammer 
For those who have a true knack for grammar, I’d call em “grammar-savants”. But if they constantly say things like, “Hey, you shouldn’t start sentences with ‘but’ like that!”, well then, I instead call them “but”-heads 🙂
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I can honestly say I’ve never given anyone grief for starting sentences with “but”. I do it way too often myself 😉
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I voted ‘Grammar Guru’… I have a friend named Bob who I’ve known since 1973, and who wrote this book http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/general-and-classical-physics/measurement-uncertainty-and-probability – which had NO grammatical issues when I read the MS. The bits I understood anyway. But I think he’d be embarrassed if I voted ‘Bob’…
I have another friend who takes photographs of grocers’ apostrophes (or, as they say, “grocer’s apostrophe’s”) on menu boards, largely to commemorate grammatical stupidities. There was one in a pub we were both drinking in where every single word with an -s ending had been adorned with an apostrophe, minus any sense of the possessive. Egg’s, potatoe’s, chip’s, burger’s. I kid you not. It’s been painted out since. mercifully.
All this said, I can’t help thinking that the UNIX/web wonks will wreck grammar in the end – I mean, a reference ending in a URL as hyperlink is destroyed if you properly put a full stop at the end of the last letter of the sentence, minus space… To which all I can say is ‘aaaaargh’.
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I should probably explain the wife and I have a running joke about naming stuff Bob. It started with the animated Sci-Fi film Titan AE where they named the new Earth Planet Bob. We’ve been naming stuff Bob ever sice 😀
I’m also partial to Grammar Guru, though Grammarista is growing on me, probably because I spent a month in London working as a barista.
The web has definitely accelerated the evolution (or possibly the descent into entropy) of grammar, as it has with so many other things.
Grammar drinking games… Would you believe I’ve never taken part in a drinking game of any sort, nor have I ever been properly drunk (a slight buzz doesn’t count)?
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I’ve never done drinking games either – I don’t drink wine or spirits by choice, I don’t like them – though we have an increasingly ageing bottle of whiskey in the cupboard for medicinal purposes. There are a few brands of beer I’ll drink, and I’ll join friends in the pub to have a few beers. But I want to be the one who makes the decision.
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Medicinal purposes. Right. 😛
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Recently joined by a miniature bottle of Teachers I was given, gratefully accepted, and quietly put into the same cupboard…not sure what I’ll do with it, but at least it won’t go off.
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Yes, before you give someone liquor as a gift, it’s usually a good idea to first find out if they partake. You can always re-gift, or auction them off in a couple of decades.
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I vote “Kelsey Grammar.”
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Ooh! That’s a good one.
Now I want to watch Frasier
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The Guardian had an article yesterday about someone who got so offended by some grammatical mistakes in a piece of graffiti that he bought some spray paint and fixed it. Now there’s someone who’s serious about grammar.
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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to be able to hack a website to correct a mistake. I know I said the other day that I hold myself back online, but when I see a business or government website that uses an apostrophe to create a plural.
And the number of blogs by authors I’ve encountered on WordPress that routinely feature homophone confusion, concord, and apostrophe errors in the first paragraph of a post. I mean, if you’ve actually managed to get published, surely you’ve learned to proofread and edit somewhere along the way. (Not talking about your blog here, of course 😉 )
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Garm.
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The Norwegian hell-hound? Or is that your name suggestion? 😀
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I think either Garm or Garmr would be a very good name for those-who-were-formerly-called-grammar-Nazis. Certainly there are times when I think just one more inappropriate it’s could cause me to start ripping throats out.
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I must say, I like the idea of a hell-hound policing grammar mistakes. It will make people think twice before inserting that apostrophe.
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