I’ve got three gripes today. The first is from Gun Digest, who seem to have succumbed to the “let SpelChek do the editing”, with this gem:
At the bear minimum, it’s novel.
…and no, it wasn’t a pun, because the gun under discussion was a .22 Mag rifle. B-A-R-E. And in the same article, by the way, we find for a bonus:
Also, it’s receiver is drilled an tapped.
I-T-S nofuckinghyphenapostrophe, and if you’re going to get all folksy and elide the conjunction, it would read “…drilled an’ tapped” (perhaps move the offending hyphen from “it’s” and just put it after the an?). Otherwise, despite SpelChek giving it the okay, it is spelled A-N-D.
Next up is the Daily Mail, (a.k.a. Illiteracy Central) and it’s a classic case of turning a noun into a verb (a.k.a. “verbing”):
“Summited”? Seriously?
There are actually two quibbles about this silliness. FIrstly, “summit” has been egregiously and unnecessarily turned into a verb. Secondly, even if you’re going to “verb” this noun, at least recognize that as spelled, it would be pronounced “sum-my-ted” — to shorten the letter “i” requires a double consonant afterwards, e.g. “submitted”, “admitted”, etc.
Right. After pouring myself a second breakfast gin, I promptly spat it all over the keyboard when an old foe reared its horrible head. This came from Steve Kruiser at PJMedia (who really should know better):
“I’m not concussed, I’m not hallucinating, I just tend to look at most things differently than other people.”
One more time: it’s “differently FROM other people”, FFS. “From” is what’s known as tadaa! a differentiator — e.g. one house differs FROM another in that it has a green roof, not a red one. (Try saying the previous sentence using “than” instead of “from”, and see how ridiculous it sounds. Welcome to my world.)
The word “than” is comparative — taller than, longer than, sillier than, etc.
I know it can be confusing. Here’s another example to help show the concept:
“Michael Phelps differs from Danny DeVito in that he’s much taller than the diminutive actor.”
Note how using the phrase “differs from” makes it a far more elegant expression than (see what I did there?) “Michael Phelps is different from Danny DeVito…”
It’s really quite simple, like most grammar rules. Which is why when they’re broken, I want to reach for the 1911 and ventilate the screen. Or the writer.