A while back, I decided to give a Windows “news and tips” site a whirl and submitted a secondary email address in order to receive notices of site updates. Since then, it’s yielded a few interesting tidbits, but sometimes, “a few interesting tidbits” just doesn’t cut it.
Recently, a portion of a topic line stood out, as at least 2/3 of the topic lines received in updates from the site have. Again, not in a positive light. The portion–this time–that made me wince: “The reason behind its name revealed !”
WTF is with the (usual and customary, from this source) space between the last word and the punctuation? It’s stupid. And, as I said, usual from this source. But that’s just the normal quality of punctuation usage from this source. What about word usage and grammar?
In the same email update: “Not why it a browser.”
?!? Yes, that’s the entire sentence fragment posing as a sentence. Where’s the verb?
And then, “…to make it running as fast and stable as new.” No, dumbasses, “to make it RUN as fast and stable as new” would at least be marginally acceptable, although “fast and stable” in this context is problematic.
“Since the last couple of days I’m seeing… ” Obviously English is a second language for the writer. Either that or the writer is a recent American college graduate.
I’ve only scratched the surface of the ear-grinding English constructions in just this one email. I can’t take it anymore. Unsubscribing, with prejudice. *heh*
Dreadful. Even in the UK English is butchered every day.
Tenon, I suffer from the handicap of having been raised by a mother who taught English… as it used to be taught in schools: grammar, parts of speech, the whole nine yards. Of course, I bend the language mercilessly whenever I want to. *heh* Still, writing that normatively has “sentences” that lack subjects or predicates is more than I can bear.
Not long after I read your post I caught my daughter (who has a double 1st in science from Cambridge) chatting on line to her boyfriend; ‘OK we’ll train to London and take it from there’. So ‘train’ is a verb now is it?
*sigh* English is no longer the (or “a”) language of science, eh? 😉
*heh* Of course, “train” is a verb, but I don’t think it means what she was trying to say. 😉