Five More Grammar Goofs

Jim Bessey began this series with five grammar goofs, and now I continue with five more that might raise eyebrows at the office, or alienate smart readers.

Dialogue breaks the rules. However, a teenager would be more likely to mangle the English language than would a newspaper editor or a schoolteacher.

“You and me can work together on this.”

You’re in the conference room, and the boss asks for volunteers to design a new sales brochure. You like the concept but know it will be too much work for one person, so you turn toward the woman next to you and say, “You and me can work together on this.”

She snickers. “Really?”

You know from past experience that she’s making fun of you. Why?

The internet has the answer: Me, him, her, and them should never be used as subjects.

Incorrect:

Me and my assistant will choose a printer.
Him and Sally will set up the proofs.
Her and Gerry plan to take photos of each item.
Them and their department can’t work together.

Here’s an easy way to check your grammar. Remove the extra person from each phrasal subject. Would you ever say any of the following?

Me will choose a printer.
Him will set up the proofs.
Her plans to take photos of each item.
Them can’t work together.

Of course you wouldn’t. Instead, you’d say:

I will choose a printer.
He will set up the proofs.
She plans to take photos of each item.
They can’t work together.

Adding more people doesn’t change the pronoun in a subject. I, he, she, and they retain their form.

“There’s a guy in Payroll that can help.”

A new employee approaches you with a problem regarding deductions on her first paycheck.

You tell her, “There’s a guy in Payroll that can help.”

She gives you the same look your professor flashed at you when you blundered in English 101. Rather than ask her the reason behind the look, you opt to spend your next break browsing the net — again — to figure out what you did wrong.

Here’s what you find:

The guy in Payroll isn’t an inanimate object. If a pronoun’s antecedent is a person, an alien, or sometimes a pet or an animal, you should choose who instead of that.

Examples:

The man who runs the department is a jerk.
The lights that illuminate the hallway are fluorescents.
ET was just an alien who wanted to go home.
USS Enterprise was the ship that Captain Kirk commanded.
Fido, who always greets me at the door, is a Scottish terrier.
Pit bulls are dogs that are renowned for their ferocity.

An artificial intelligence like the emergency medical hologram on Star Trek: Voyager also merits the who designation.

“Coffee? Sure. An expresso, please.”

While you’re searching for the correct usage of who and that, a fellow employee asks if you’d like a coffee.

You reply, “Coffee? Sure. An expresso, please.”

Uh-oh — there’s “the look” again. What does Google have to say about expresso?

Turns out expresso is the way the French spell the word, but it should be espresso in North America.

You also discover other words that people say and write incorrectly:

ax (ask)
chester drawers (chest of drawers)
ex cetera (et cetera)
excape (escape)
expecially (especially)
Febuary (February)
heighth (height [no th at the end])
interpretate (interpret [no ate at the end])
larnyx (larynx)
libary (library)
mischievious (mischievous)
nucular (nuclear)
perculate (percolate)
perscription (prescription)
prespire (perspire)
probly (probably)
pronounciation (pronunciation)
revelant (relevant)
sherbert (sherbet)
supposably (supposedly)
tenderhooks (tenterhooks)
triathalon (triathlon)
upmost (utmost)

… and a whole lot more.

“Irregardless, I’m not convinced.”

You present a budget to your boss. He frowns. You justify some of the items he questions, but he’s dissatisfied and says, “Irregardless, I’m not convinced.”

You bite your tongue, knowing full well that irregardless is a nonstandard word.

Yes, it appears in dictionaries, always marked as nonstandard, but so does nonstandard, which means not average, normal, or usual.

Should you say something?

You shrug. No, your paycheck is too important to risk.

“I could care less what he thinks.”

The same coworker who snickered about you and me stalks toward your workstation, wearing a scowl on her face that would curdle milk. She slaps a memo onto your desk.

The memo is a scathing commentary from the boss on your coworker’s latest idea to boost employee productivity.

Her voice, barely held to a civil volume, blasts her disapproval. “I could care less what he thinks.”

Do you call her on the error? No freakin’ way. Instead, you try a tactful reply: “I couldn’t care less about the color of my mousepad, but three people from Personnel have asked me about my preference.”

Your coworker bites her lip and stares past you for a moment as her face turns a delightful shade of red. “Ha! You got me. Maybe you’re not as dense as I thought.”

Couldn’t care less is an expression used to indicate someone’s indifference. A person who couldn’t care less about a situation is completely unconcerned and dispassionate about it.

Could care less implies there is still room for a downward shift in the level of a person’s concern.

If you like chocolate, it’s possible you could care less about it.

If the color of a room is utterly irrelevant to you, you might say, “I couldn’t care less about the color.”

A Few Words About the Decline of the English Language

Coworkers, news anchors, movies, friends … everyone goofs. Sometimes those goofs become popular and make it into the dictionary.

However, if you want to preserve the purity of our rapidly declining method of communication, it pays to know correct grammar — especially if you want to impress the boss or your readers.