Day 17: Annoyances

Prompt: "Something about the world that annoys you."

If we're speaking strictly of the physical world, I'm annoyed by the fact that I live on a part of it that gets so warm. But that's not really what we're asking.

The thing that gets under my skin the most is bad grammar. Sometimes in speaking (though I'm not frequently around people that often use bad grammar) but primarily in writing. I've recently (as in, in the last hour or two) realized that I get quite annoyed by people that use big words to mask insecurity in writing.

I would far rather read a paragraph comprised entirely of one- and two-syllable words that made grammatical sense than a paragraph filled with lofty-sounding words strung together that make little or no sense.

Now, I'm not without my faults. I would by no means purport to have perfect grammar. (If you like, revisit my 15 facts wherein we discover that for most of my life I misspelled "ridiculous" and to this day consistently misspell "occasionally" [as I just did and had to re-type it, as a matter of fact; but I got it right the second time].)

Grammar pet peeves (in no particular order):

• "Could care less." If you could care less, why bother saying anything? It's like trying to say the water's too cold and instead saying "it could be colder." Or trying to say you really want something and instead saying "I could want it more." Or trying to say that you don't care about something at all and instead saying it would be possible to care less (which, if I'm not mistaken, is actually the case).


• Lie vs. lay. Lay requires a direct object. Lie does not. It's quite simple. If you don't know what a direct object is, imagine the actual thing of which you're speaking in your bed and see if it works. "I am (lying/laying) on the bed." I should be in bed, so it's "lying!". "The hen is (lying/laying) eggs." I'd really rather not go to bed if there are eggs in process of being laid. "Let me (lie/lay) these groceries on the counter." If you leave the groceries in bed, they'll spoil. Bad idea. "Let me (lay/lie) down and rest for a minute." I suppose you can rest anywhere. The floor; your car; inside a dryer*. But truthfully, the best place to lie down and rest is your bed. Which is where I should be. All right, perhaps it doesn't work in every situation. So you should probably ignore my advice and just figure out what a direct object is. But it was a fun ride, no?


• Unknown past participles. "Swum," "drunk," and "woken" are actually really terrible. I'm not going to argue that. But especially the misuse (or lack of use) of "woken" really bothers me. If it hurts you that much to say such an ugly (yet correct) word, just say "awakened." Yes, you sound pretentious. But those are really your only two options. (Unless, of course, you restructure the whole sentence and just take responsibility for the time you awoke and say, "I had gotten out of bed at..." Or you could go with "roused." I think I much prefer that option to any of the aforementioned. One of my friends (to be left unnamed) who has impeccable grammar the majority of the time consistently uses "ran" as the past participle of "to run." It bothers me every time.


• The "I" vs. "Me" debate. I'm so over "I" being used as the object of sentences because so many of us have heard the correction, "Sammy and I want to grow up to be fat and lazy." Really, it's not correct in all situations. If it's the object of a sentence, it's "me". Unless of course, it comes with an unstated conjugation of "to be," most often following a comparison with "than" (e.g., "Cara is far more noxious than I [am]," or "Though Patrick may have well-defined abs, Theodore's noble chin makes him far more attractive than he [is]." Though the latter comes with its own pet peeve....).


• Poorly constructed sentences that leave the listener/reader unclear to what the modifier refers. "Eli bought a cat but then he got hit by a car." The cat or Eli? Should I be panicked or elated? (There's a lot of cat-hating going on in this post; I apologize. I don't hate cats. Specifically. I'm more of an equal-opportunity animal critic.) "Joe went to buy a car, but before he decided to spend the money, he wanted to buy a cup of coffee and a scone, but then he decided it was too expensive." The coffee? The scone? The car? If he thought the scone was too expensive, what business did he have going to buy a car? Or perhaps that was the problem. He was spending so much on a car, he couldn't bear to spend $8 at Starbuck's. But we'll never know will we? (I don't even know and I wrote it.)


• Questions that aren't really questions. "Jim and I were wondering if you and Kate would like to come over for dinner Saturday night." If I were having a bad day**, I might not respond at all to this, honestly. I am that snarky. It doesn't beg a response. In fact, it begs a non-response. If I'm in a bad mood, Jim and Shelley will continue to wonder if Kate and I would like to come to dinner because they have yet to ask. But probably only if it was a really bad day and I didn't particularly care for Jim and Shelley.


• Saying "do you want" instead of "will you please." My answer will almost always be "no" to the former if I feel like it should have been phrased as the latter. Luckily for me and everyone around me, I've learned to keep this gut-response "no" inside my head and respond as a decent human being.

Although, now we've spring-boarded into a whole new world of word choice as opposed to grammar. My final bullet is not so much a grammar issue as it is a communication issue.

There are probably quite a few grammar mistakes hidden within these words. I quite honestly didn't care enough to thoroughly proof-read. There are also probably quite a few personal stylizations (nope, not actually a word) that don't fit into proper grammar rules (I point you to the above statement "I'm so over..."). This is a blog. It was never intended to be an academic paper or a comprehensive grammar manual. It was intended to be a fun (and now, I'm sure, quite terrifying) peak into my head. If you, as a reader, would like to compile a list of all my errors and post them in a comment, feel free.

I may have to buy you a cup of coffee for your efforts.

*If you're a cat, maybe. A suicidal cat.

**I took this opportunity to finally research the past subjunctive conjugation of "to be," because saying "I were" has always felt strange to me. If you don't know what subjunctive is, you probably never learned a foreign language. I didn't even know there was a subjunctive until I learned it in Spanish 2.