Okay, first of all just shut up. Yes, the cranky old woman is back. But, guess what? If you spent even 2 minutes listening to or watching part of Squint Eastwood’s conversation with a damn chair, you can spend 5 minutes reading this. Remember, everything I have to tell you is for the good of the future of our nation; this nation that is failing us by the minute whilst you all stand by playing with your electronic opiates and ignoring the fact that you’ve been robbed of even a mediocre education.
Little known fact, little known because – refer to paragraph one – we aren’t so big on facts in this here country: the U.S. of A is one of very few nations that do not require their children to learn more than one language. To quote the abstract from this lengthy paper on the subject, “Multilingualism is the norm in the world, monolingualism is an exception.”
You know, I wouldn’t be so irate about that if we were, at least, required to learn our own language. Thus, I am here today to beg you to learn, despite the lack of elementary education. If you can read, you can learn. Just some basics, that’s all I ask. Know the difference between the personal pronouns and use them accordingly, even when you see them being misused by important people.
The first thing you should be able to do is get a grip on yourself; that is the first person: me, myself and I. “I” is to be used as a subject, never an object. For instance, I asked Marty if he was talking to me. Or, Bobby and I asked Marty if he was talking to us. Never Bobby and me asked anything, although We could ask Marty if he was talking to Bobby and me. So “me” is always the objective case, never the subjective unless as used in this very sentence.
“Myself” is ONLY reflexive. The “__self”s (herself, himself, yourself, itself and themselves) can only be objective reflections of the objects. Only I can get in touch with myself, you can get in touch with me. Therefore, all of these memos circulating wherein the signature line says, “If you have any questions, please get in touch with Colonel Mustard or myself,” it is wrong no matter who wrote it.
All of this applies to you and her and him and it and them so please go forth and make the bad grammar stop. I’ll wait a long time for the next lecture if y’all work on this one for now. I thank you and my ears also thank you.
I think you mean: “… are wrong, no matter who wrote them.” Further, it should be a semicolon, not a comma, in the sentence preceding this one. Grammar, man! Grammar!
/shakes head sadly.
OH, no not Andy – that is my bad. Not sure why Andy is taking the byline but then, I never question my FD captain’s decisions. I am intrigued by the suggestion of the semi-colon – do you mean prior to the quoted phrase or at end? If prior, then I argue at best a colon there but why not a comma? Show me the semi-colon rule, I am never to old to learn – just realized in this, my sixth decade, that one should use I rather than me when comparing to another person, such as: “Bill is two days older than I.” But, back to the semi-colon and the it rather than they. I really ought to have put a period at the end of the quoted phrase and made the sentence about wrong no matter what stand on its own and still used “it” or “that” rather than they – that’s just my feeling about the prose and has nothing to do with grammar. But, you are incredibly correct that “it” is so very wrong when continuing after a comma. However, please still do show me the semi-colon way – I’ve got it down for many other purposes so if this should be, I will adapt it as well.
You can stop shaking your head now, Andy didn’t do it (or they).
Andy took the byline because he stupidly forgot to change that when he posted the article last night. Internets are hard.
Okay, okay – I vow to have a meeting with you, the gang and the wordpress so you don’t have to do the hard part. Gotta get through some grueling physical therapy for the evil knee (which is really only trying to tell me to shed some pounds) before I can go anywhere for a few weeks. But, in this case, I like that you did it as it brought in another proof reader. I know how much easier it is to proof the work of others than ones own and welcome any comments that will make my writing look and sound better. I’ll try to get my next submission to Cleveland Girl by this weekend then you can proof and tell me to jump into WordPress and wend my way through.
Aw, man. That was funnier when I was mocking Andy’s grammar.
It should be “they” rather than “it” because the start of the sentence talks about “all of these memos” plural, not singular. Of course you can have “it” after a comma. A comma just breaks before a subordinate clause, or breaks back after one. Aside from some niggliness over using one before “which” and not before “that” – I don’t know the rule on that – there aren’t any usage weirdnesses with commas.
A semicolon is used instead of a full stop. It separates what can be written as two distinct sentences – which subordinate clauses like those separated by commas can’t be – so long as those sentences are related to one another. If they’re not related, you’ve no choice but to use a period. People always get commas and semicolons confused, but they don’t really have anything to do with one another.
Example!
“A semicolon is used instead of a full stop; it separates two distinct sentences but can be used instead of a period so long as those sentences are related to one another.”
Mostly, though, I thought I was just winding Andy up for shits and giggles. Now I feel a bit bad.
John, Please! Seriously, do not feel bad – and if we keep meeting like this you’ll have a plethora of oversights of mine about which to get niggly. Never sure when the damn “to” shows up when I know full well I meant “too” whether I really didn’t type that second ‘o’ or it got eaten in the transmission. But, I welcome all points of grammar. Now, getting back to that semi-colon – I believe that I was correct with a comma because my sentence was to display a quote as in: “The memo says, ‘…get in touch with Jordan or myself.’” The example was not at all a distinct sentence from the beginning of that thought. If I had it to do over again, I would still use the comma but damn sure would use the right verb “say” for all the memos(subject). Then I would end the sentence after the quote and still use “It is just wrong no matter who says it,” as a declarative sentence, choosing the It is over they are just because I like the sound of it better for this example. So, no semi-colon there at all. I do know about semi-colons in the sense of semi-relating two sentences that could stand alone but do carry a common thread; I love the semi-colon which, used here, stands so much better than comma and. I really don’t know of any use of said semi-colon, however, when preceding phrase (cannot for the life of me remember what the damn part of sentence is called) the tells you a quote is coming.
Andy – if the only thing keeping this guy pointing out the errors is that he thinks you did the writing, for godsake, man up and take the byline back,
Did I remember incorrectly that numbers should be shown as numbers only when they are more than one digit? Yes, mother, I read your posts.
You did remember correctly, in a formal paper numbers that are one digit should be written out such as two and five. However, I was taking a bit of ‘literary’ license – just as I did with “It is wrong.” Sometimes putting a number as a number is more attention grabbing. Please keep looking for this grammatical mishaps and thank you for reading.
Ah, but I said the preceding *sentence*, which isn’t the “Therefore…” one with the example in quotes, but this one: ” Only I can get in touch with myself, you can get in touch with me.”
This should be: “Only I can get in touch with myself; you can get in touch with me.” The second’s not a sub-clause of the first, but distinct.
(But “says” is correct, because it refers to the signature line, singular, not the memos, plural.)
You are correct about separating that sentence with a semi-colon and I thank you; it looks ever so much better this way and I think I must have it in needlepoint now.