Saturday, May 06, 2006

Blog Stuff: Death to the English...

...language.

The overall decline of literacy poked me in the eye again this morning. I swung by Oleg's LiveJournal, and clicked on a link to a movie he was excited about seeing. I read the blurb with interest until I got to this sentence:
Observing all is The Writer (Bill Murray) an ex-patriot American who sees Fico being drawn into events as the revolution changes everything.
...which totally put me off my feed.

To the knuckle-walking troglodyte who has somehow got himself a job writing copy for the production company: Bill Murray's character may indeed be an "ex-patriot"; not having seen your flick, I don't know. I do know, however, that the word you were looking for was "expatriate", which is a noun meaning "One who has taken up residence in a foreign land."

My collection of split infinitives, dangling participles, run-on sentences, and excessive vernacular is hardly "writing", but compared to a lot of what I read today, I feel like a regular Hemingway. For gawd's sake, is there not a proofreader left alive in this country?

8 comments:

Shane said...

Hit ghost tush oh theirs tuo mulch truss tin spill czech errs

Dr. StrangeGun said...

Ain't it nuthin' but a shame? Kids these days ain't got no sense of thur langige.

phlegmfatale said...

that were funny, shane.

In fact, Tam, you are a brilliant writer. I am appalled by the spelling and grammatical errors that make it into print in major publications these days. Disappointing.

Anonymous said...

i dont c nething rong wif his engrish!!!!111

People these days...

Anonymous said...

Pfffft. I could care less...





I can't be the only one wanting to say, "Uh, Sparky, it's 'couldn't'. 'Could' means you care about it." Then again I guess I learned my lesson the first few times I said it and they looked at me like a dogs looks at someone the first time they hear Chinese.

theirritablearchitect said...

No, there isn't. Instead, it's far more important to be from the left side of the aisle in the news business these days, but you already knew that.

Zendo Deb said...

the language is dead....

go into any fast food joint and order a small fry. You will be told that "medium is the smallest size we have."

I think Foamy says it best...
http://www.illwillpress.com/sml.html

Zendo Deb said...

Foamy's words of wisdom