*sigh* One can always pick out writers who have read darned little (and that of little worth) in their lives by misuses or even complete misstatements of common phrases in their writings. ( Always? OK, not always. Sometimes other clues tip the scale. Back to the regularly-scheduled rant.)
Case in point: While reading a political article (which I shall not link in order to protect the guilty), I read, “For all intensive purposes,” and immediately stopped reading. I did make a comment about subliterates at the site (and left out “does”–an essential word in the sentence! *heh*), but methought, “Hmmm, blog rant!”
OK, here’s the deal: when I run across someone pontificating from a self-appointed position as a pundit who uses such subliterate goonerosities *heh* as “for all intensive purposes” (add to the pile of subliterate crap, “irregardless” and “escape goat” and “hone in on” and “tongue and cheek” and… you perhaps get the picture), I simply stop reading their writing. Why pollute my brain with more literary sewage from someone who’s read little and whose selection of reading matter–what little there has been–has obviously been subliterate crap? (A typical subliterate construction in that sentence would’ve been “whose” for “who’s” or vice versa. ;-))
I blame it all on TV. 😉
(Well, and lazy people.)
Micro-mini-update:
I just thought to google, “common errors in English” and found this. It looks as though it covers an abundance of the kinds of things that make me want to slap silly those dishonest word jockeys who are paid to spout subliterate crap (taking good money to perform shoddy work is theft, IMO. Ah, well, bad money’s driving out good money, now, anyway… ).
Thanks to TF and his reminder of Norm Crosby’s malapropisms. Here’s a takeoff on that theme:
There was a stand up comedian many years ago, a former English teacher named Norm Crosby. He made fun of so many blunders; but he later found that lots of his puns were missed because our foundational English had already accepted the blunders as standards.
*sigh*
Heh. It is like an internet law or something that when snarkily correcting the bad grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. of others that you *will* make a mistake in same and notice it immediately after you hit the post button. 🙂
Yep. But the author of the piece is still a subliterate moron. And I don’t mind letting folks know I pooed the scrooch. I’ve never claimed perfection, anyway. 😉 [edit] Well, not often and never seriously. *heh*