[FreeBeacon] Grammar Nazis suck. We all know this. Most Grammar Nazis are quarantined into editor positions where their evil can be best contained and used for good, but many exist in the wild. Most recently, 61-year-old retired teacher Yvonne Mason went viral and earned widespread media coverage for correcting a series of grammatical errors in a White House letter sent under Donald Trump's name, and promising to mail it back.
As bad as Grammar Nazis are, incompetent Grammar Nazis might be the worst people alive. It's bad enough to act like an annoying pedant, but doing it wrong ensures that the rest of us have to also become annoying pedants in order to correct your misinformation. Bad Grammar Nazis are the zombies of discourse, spreading their infection to the healthy.
Alas, Mason is a bad Grammar Nazi. And the media fell for it, hard.
The bulk of her complaints (eleven of the fifteen, by my count) are the White House's capitalization of words like "federal," "nation" and "president." "Federal is capitalized only when used as part of a proper noun," she complains, adding at the end "OMG this is WRONG!"
But as the New York Times noted in its story on the letter:
However, a style manual for the federal government calls for capitalizing "Nation" and "Federal" when the words are used as a synonym for the United States. It says "State" should be capitalized when it is referring to the government or legislature. In letters from Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush that constituents posted online, words like "Nation" and "President" are capitalized.
So right off the bat, we learn that the vast majority of "errors" in the Trump letter are not. And The New York Times discovered this fact and subsequently wrote up the story… why exactly? More at the link
#1
Perfectly understandable. Trump is literally Hitler and if you had the opportunity to correct Hitler's grammar, wouldn't you take it and possibly save the World? Er, world.
Of course, if Trump were literally literally Hitler, you would't dare engage in such rudeness lest thick, unsmiling men show up at your door late one night to escort you to some uncapitalized gulag where Oxford commas and social niceties would be the least of your problems.
#4
When it comes to written English, just the fact that the media jumped on this and made it viral illustrates how little they, of all people, know the intricacies of written English.
#6
"Grammar Nazis suck" especially if they're smarmy, lefty, elitists trying to be clever. Suppose, Obama used poor grammar? He would be considered cool, clever and cute. Grammar rules would suddenly change to accommodate his jackassitical (is that a word?) manner and grammar faux pas.
Mrs. Malaprop the humorous old dowdy aunt in the comedy "The Rivals" was a woman who was always making up new words or neologisms. These came to be called "malaprops."
Warren G. Harding was savaged for using the word "normalcy." I've got a feeling that many celebs and leaders create neologisms. Depending upon who uses them, they tend to be ignored or smoothed over. However, in hypercritical times, other leaders tend to be excoriated for bad grammar. They are accused of grammatical ignorance. Tweets tend to force new or what used to be considered poor grammar.
#8
I'm pretty weird and judgemental myself, and my imaginary fiddle was halfway through "Cuckoo in the Wine Box" before I got past the handwriting and a thumbnail portrait. As usual, the news is the news. The newsual?
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[FreeBeacon] Grammar Nazis suck. We all know this. Most Grammar Nazis are quarantined into editor positions where their evil can be best contained and used for good, but many exist in the wild. Most recently, 61-year-old retired teacher Yvonne Mason went viral and earned widespread media coverage for correcting a series of grammatical errors in a White House letter sent under Donald Trump's name, and promising to mail it back.
