Crumbs From the Corner: Adventures in Woolgathering

Thursday, July 9, 2009

A Note on Vandals



Some fellows wreaked havoc on neighbourhood streets this week, tearing around the city I live in and behaving like rascals.
According to my local newspaper those persons were deemed to be vandalists. Aye: vandalists.
To tell the awful truth, I am increasingly more concerned about the grammar vandals. They are many, and their work- ventures in which they plunder the language- is a silent streak of mayhem and catastrophe.
They ought to be apprehended, or at the very least, we ought not to consider them for literary positions at newspaper offices.

4 comments:

Kelli said...

Oh don't ya love that? It's actually listed in the "Urban Dictionary", and has been used in American journaling, but it is not listed in Webster's dictionary so I agree that it's not a "real" word. What's even better than that one is when a journalist or public speaker says "conversate", instead of "converse". I groan every time I hear that one!

Pappy said...

I have renamed our local paper, "The Daily Error" for a variety of good reasons. Pappy

Morning's Minion said...

You have named one of my pet peeves. Either there are no longer such beings as "proof readers" or they aren't educated in proper grammer and vocabulary. And then there are the news commentators who sound as if they had taken a crash course in Valley Girl talk--'like, you think, like, maybe?'

Phyllis Hunt McGowan said...

Kelli, made up words... I hate them; they are used to avoid opening a dictionary. And then everyone gets the wrong idea and starts using it as a real word.

Texican, I might just do the same. I will put in an official petition to change it!

Morning's Minion, I'm glad I'm not alone :) I don't mean to brag, but I'd never let an error like that slip into the paper.

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