Monday, March 25, 2013

Breaking Grammar Rules


As an example of my grammar training eons ago, I caught myself saying to my husband, “I have two milk chocolates with which to trade,” instead of “I have two milk chocolates to trade you with.”

Ending a sentence with a preposition is not as taboo as it used to be, especially in fiction. You want your characters to sound realistic, and no one says, “To which movie are we going?”  
 

My husband likes to tell the story of Winston Churchill making fun of this rule by saying, “Putting a preposition at the end of a sentence is something up with which we will not put.”

Sometimes we need to break grammar rules, but it helps to know them so you can break them in the right places.

How much of a grammar stickler are you? What grammar mistakes irk you most?

12 comments:

  1. I know I make alot of mistakes in this area.

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    1. I think a lot depends on how you were raised, Denise.

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  2. I loved grammar in school. None of the mistakes irk me, but some make me feel smug. And they shouldn't because I make way too many mistakes to laugh at anyone. I have more fun on word choice mistakes such as "I seen a deer." You get that a lot on hunting shows.

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    1. And we hear it a lot here in the Midwest, Nancy. I think it's how people grew up, so to them, it doesn't sound wrong.

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  3. Jeanette: I get upset when I hear a word mispronounced. I worked with a woman who always said, "tem-PLATE" instead of tem-plut." She would have been offended if anyone had corrected her. Her daughter said the same thing.

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  4. Biggest irk = alot.

    I write a lot so that others will see how to spell a lot. ;-)

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Oh, it's YOU! I'm so happy to see you here today, and look forward to reading your comments.