When I read a book or watch television or listen to the radio, my Internal English Teacher, Writer, and Editor immediately report for duty. It's incredibly exhausting, dragging these people around with me constantly. I wish they'd go away. They make my life a constant trial, like having that itchy tag in the back of your shirt when you're impossibly occupied and can't do a thing about it. Or like when your neighbour suddenly and inexplicably hangs wind chimes, and you never get another quiet evening out on the patio ever again. Or when you feel like you have something in your eye, but you absolutely cannot see what it is, let alone get the damn thing out. These Alter Egos endlessly alert me to little faux pas in grammar, spelling, mechanics, and usage in both written and spoken language. Why? Why? It's not like I can do a single thing about them other than Despair and Lament, Wail and Gnash My Teeth, and otherwise Moan and Fret about the downward spiral of The Language and The Intellect Of Our Country.It's a good thing I Drink.
Here's a couple of examples from TV:
A week or so ago, one of the cutest on-the-spot reporters for the local Cleveland news affiliate was on the scene of a pretty big fire that included an explosion. Brandon--that's his name--was standing in the foreground of the devastation, and here's how part of his segment went:
Brandon: As you can see, Sarah, the building is a total loss, and there's damage to the property beside it as well. Several other neighbouring fire departments had to be called out to contain the blaze.
Sarah: Oh my. What about casualties? Was anyone hurt?
Brandon: Well, there is some good news there, Sarah. The people inside weren't there.
?!?!?!?!
Sigh. It's a good thing I love Brandon. It really is.
This next one is from a commercial for a legal team. For some reason, lawyer commercials are particularly bad at mechanics and grammar. "We" try to have my phone ready to snap a picture every time one comes on.
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| thought I'd better obscure the phone # |
How in the hell is a dead person going to call for a free legal consultation? Just who are these people marketing to? WHAT IS HAPPENING OUT THERE? AND WHY MUST I ALWAYS BE ALERTED TO IT?
Am I alone in this? Share your Irks or at least make me feel better in Comments.
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LOL All I can hear in my head is the theme from The Twilight Zone (the people inside weren't there). I don't watch TV (other than PBS and Netflix) so I (thankfully) don't see commercials.
ReplyDeleteVera--Definitely a Twilight Zone moment, yeah.
DeleteI watch comparatively little TV in that we don't have cable, but I watch the local and national news, and I watch a little at night in bed to get me tired enough to sleep. We watch PBS too, and I am devoted to the Great British Baking Show at present. And thank goodness for Netflix!
Both your examples made me laugh. I did see the lawyer's ad when it was on TV and I thought the same thing. With the on-the-spot reporting, they don't get to edit and view it ahead of time, so we can be more forgiving.
ReplyDeleteJean--I do forgive the reporters for the most part; it's those Other People in me that get so picky. And Brandon is so cute and earnest that he'll always get a pass from me...at least so far.
DeleteReporters that have been on the air at a particular station for YEARS and yet don't know how to pronounce some of the local towns.
ReplyDeletePeople that say they are "humbled" by an accolade when, in fact, they should be "honored".
Tonight on the ABC World News they had two reports that were word for word the same as yesterday's report, but they of course, "had NEW information". Huh?????
Oh my ..... we could down SEVERAL bottles of wine discussing these situations.
Dee--Our locals have been pretty good at some of our more quirky town names, but we always feel bad for the newbies when faced with Mantua (MAN oo way) or Lima (pronounced like the bean, not like Peru's city).
DeleteI almost rebel and switch to ABC World News because Lester Holt is several days late with lots of news stories. I admire the fact that they might be verifying, but I think it is more likely that they are using the pre-taped segments as fillers or hold-overs if other news bumped it from the day before. I detest Old News.
I'll supply the wine; we have plenty!
I do the same thing, all the time. And the spelling errors - like last week when the teaser for the weather said that it would be especially rainy on "Wensday." Ugh.
ReplyDeleteBridget--So glad it's not just me.
DeleteOur local affiliate's graphics are especially heinous on the weekends. I think they just call in any old passerby from the street to type out stuff for them. It's agony for me.
I have seen the "dead" loved one many times on class action lawsuit ads for mesothelioma. Drives me nuts. I also get riled up when Univisión makes spelling mistakes in their chyrons. (I have to warn my students about that, which is a shame because I do encourage them to watch the news in Spanish. *sigh*) This fall I will be teaching an advanced grammar course to heritage speakers. This has its own textbook for heritage speakers of Spanish with a special section in each chapter that focuses on common spelling errors. Maybe I should start taking photos of the TV screen and get them to 'spot the error', lol.
ReplyDeleteOrtizzle--I imagine teaching a Spanish class to heritage speakers will be challenging. Lots of laziness and dialect and Spanglish will have corrupted their language (I heard it all the time among my friends in South Lorain growing up and listened to the Spanish teachers at my school complain mightily about it). It's no different than the enormous population of native speakers of English who persist in saying "We seen it" and spelling the word "yeah" ya or yah, definately for "definitely", using the 's to make plurals of common nouns, or any one of a million other persistent misspellings that make me crazy.
DeleteI'm off to Google "chyrons" as they pertain to Spanish. ;-)
Ortizzle--Now I feel stupid! I had no idea that "Chyrons" was the tech term for the graphics superimposed on the TV screen! Thank you for broadening my knowledge.
DeleteActually, I have taught heritage speakers many times--- It's just been a few years since I taught this particular course. And yes... I have all the grievances you mention. I do not blame them for their non-literacy issues in Spanish. What depresses me is how many of them blow it all off and do not study because they think that since they *speak* Spanish already, their writing skills are not important. (Or even worse: they think their written Spanish is correct and also that their spoken Spanish is equally flawless.)
DeleteChyrons: I actually learned that term on a news show a while back because they were discussing how irate 45 gets when he doesn't like the chyrons. (The newscasters were kind enough to explain it to viewers, which was a good thing, because I was not even certain about how to spell it, lol.)
Yes. I also get unreasonably upset over such things. One that recurs is the habit of putting reporters alongside a busy, noisy freeway to report an accident that is no longer visible. The same to the reporters in waders standing in flooded streets. And I must add the reporters driving in a blizzard, warning drivers how dangerous it is and to stay off the roads. I have seen a report "live from Riverside Cemetery." Perhaps the dumbest question I have heard was asked of a resident about the drought in 2016. She had just reported that the drought was the worst since the late 1800s, when such data were first recorded. She asked the resident, "Have you ever seen it this dry here before?"
ReplyDeleteOh dear! That one is actually funny.
DeleteNCmountainwoman--Those ironies are also a real pet peeve of my husband's. I recall many Weather Channel reporters being forcibly blown around during hurricane reports. Why? Love your examples, though they would have brought My Inner Staff a ton of exasperation, too.
DeleteOh my yes. Not only that, but the editors and other picky voices make me stop with a jerk when I come to a bad one. I am going to have syntax whiplash, I am sure.
ReplyDeleteLatest disaster. Writer using 'couple' as in married couple, as a singular subject. Whump.
Mary G--I am comforted to know that I suffer not alone. ;-)
DeleteI hate to nitpick (do I?), but "couple" can often be singular if said couple is acting as a collective noun single unit.
Example: The couple are currently living apart until their wedding in June. (plural)
Example: The couple has three purebred Persian cats, all award-winners. (singular)
If your writer wasn't using it correctly, however, you can still whump him/her.
The couple has died within three days of each other. Whump. Why it is difficult to teach the present perfct. Nance, it might be correct, but it sounds weird.
DeleteMary--It DOES sound weird because it's wrong, as you suspected. The couple did not die as a unit, per se. And the usage of "couple" here is terrible anyway. And so is the present perfect tense of "die". Why didn't the writer simply state "The husband and wife died within three days of each other"? Why use couple at all? The whole thing is quite awkward. Double Whump.
DeleteOh my goodness, I'm laughing out loud here. Poor Brandon, who I'll assume meant something else entirely. Words be tricky, that be why some of us majored in English. Good one, nance.
ReplyDeleteAlly Bean--All I did was to report it. But I'm glad you got a good chuckle!
DeleteWell, this was a fun post & comment thread! I don't have a TV example, but I remember with fondness the Notary Public Manual that I received from Greene County Ohio. At first I was HORRIFIED by how terrible it was - and I started highlighting the errors instead of studying the content like I should have been doing. There was more yellow than white on the pages. Then, after I had highlighted the 20th "ot" (which should have been "of") I had an epiphany: Greene County had taken someone else's manual, scanned it in, and used OCR software to recognize the words so they could edit it. And then no one read through the thing to make sure it had been scanned properly.
ReplyDeleteI think I still have that manual somewhere - I think I'll have to post some pictures of it on my blog, so you can join in my horror.
P.S. I went to my blog to make sure I hadn't already shared photos and found this gem: I PASSED MY NOTARY EXAM!! I know – I'm as shocked as you are. I love how they worded the letter: "I will cause the successful application blanks to be signed…" What if the application blanks were unsuccessful?
DeleteBug--Sigh. Another sadness, the lack of proofreading in general because no one is concerned and figures, "Oh, who cares? They'll know what it meant/means to say." This wounds me especially deeply. That and Profound Laziness and Reliance Upon Autocorrect/Spell Check, the latter which caused one of my students to turn in an essay entitled "Movie Review: The Last of the Mahogany" sometime around 2003. Hitting "Spell check/correct all/Print" at 7 AM, then rushing to turn it in at deadline on your way to the tanning bed (taking a half day off--prom season, you know!) never works out.
DeleteDoes your notary license carry over to NC? Will you notarize there, too?
No - it was just for Ohio. I used to be a NC notary & plan to do it again - just have to find the time. As I recall, the NC manual was MUCH better. Of course, that was in the olden days (1992 or so) when they actually used proofreaders.
DeleteI like to listen to NPR podcasts while I am walking the dog. Lately I am Unhappy due to certain words being used. "Actually", when it doesn't seem needed. "Way", as in, "The house was way under water". WHY? It bothers me on local news or whatever, but I hold NPR to a higher standard, and so it bugs me even more.
ReplyDeleteNow when I see a typo, I want to snap a photo and put it on my blog, just for you. But I'm too lazy. As you know, the most common issue is apostrophes where not needed. I recently saw a plural when it should have been an apostrophe, which shocked me, but sadly, I did not have my phone and it was a one day special, so I didn't catch it.
J@jj.com--Bless your dear sweet heart for thinking of me! I hope you do so at other times, when it is a more pleasant scenario, like drinking a particularly crisp sauvignon blanc or eating a lovely truffle fry, or finding a spectacular avocado. (Gosh, those are all Food Things. Oh, well.)
DeleteI love NPR, as most of us Left-Leaners do, but yes, I tend to want to hold them to a higher standard, forgetting that their guests are still Just Folks.
Years ago, when I was still lamenting the low state of The Language, I coined the term Sweatpant Language to describe the laziness and overall casualness that has increasingly crept into written and spoken English, thanks in part to text messaging, online communication, and now, the devaluation of Intellectualism.
I think I will continue to be a Language Advocate--involuntarily and reflexively due to my training--almost as a Protest/Resistance.
Thanks for commenting here. I'm so happy to see you.
Mmmm, wine, avocados, and truffle fries. All lovely indeed.
DeleteRegarding the NPR, if it had been the guests, it would not have bothered me so much. It's the staff, the journalists, and that hurts.
Speech of news persons has long been an irritating factor for me in addition to their program's content time wasted with chit chat. I could describe much more. Advertising language is a whole separate source of annoyance. I cannot escape noticing these irritating factors, but my reaction has muted a bit through the years. I still have this "at" problem, however. The automatic recurring "Just before the at!" I am unable to short circuit from entering my brain's consciousness whenever someone ends their sentence/question with "at". That was my Mother's response to me anytime I said "Where's it at?". Others didn't seem to learn the same lesson I did. I am reconciled to going to the grave with those words echoing in my head. But if someone comes to the cemetery and utters, "Where's she at?" I swear my ghost will haunt them the rest of their lives.
ReplyDeleteJoared--Oh oh oh!!! I share your alarm and disdain and peevishness for the terminal AT. I don't hear it too terribly often, thank goodness. (Perhaps you should add a small (Here I am.) on your tombstone! LOL)
DeleteLast week, I had a head-splitting migraine--one that woke me at 2 AM with instant and violent nausea and incredible pain--that left me on the couch for an entire day. I was frantic to be well/comfortable/somewhat productive, but it was tough. I turned on a morning news show, and I could only tolerate about five minutes of its nonstop nonsensical uptalk before I turned it off, learning nothing more than details about the hosts' weekend activities and what kind of animal they would wish to be. If it would not have been even more excruciating, I would have rolled my eyes into the back of my head.
You make me laugh, but I have to say you must hate to visit my blog with my horrible spelling and punctuation! I did ! on purpose.
ReplyDeleteMeredith--Here's the thing with my Inner English Staff: while they may NOTICE and POINT OUT these bugaboos to me, they don't stop me from emotionally enjoying/appreciating content when it's something I care about. Virtually all of the blogs I read are written by people who do something else for a living. They're not professional writers; they write online because they love to write or connect with like-minded people or have something they want to share with others. Their sincerity and authenticity can go a pretty long way in making up for a few small Language errors here and there. I very much enjoy visiting your blog, as you must know since I am a regular commenter!
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