Sunday, July 18, 2010

Me and him went to town.

There is so much wrong with that sentence. For one thing, me and him hardly know each other, and I can assure you that me and him have never went to town together. We may have went to town separately, but the plain fact is we have never went to town together as implied in the sentence. When you are in doubt about how a sentence may be received, it is always better to recast it to say what you actually mean. A better rendering of this particular sentence would be: Me and him have went to town on occasion, but never together, always separately, in case you were wondering, as me and him hardly know each other, but her and him have went to town frequently, in more ways than one.

Thanks go out to Mr. Aloysius P. Snowbrush of Lowell, Mass., for inspiring this brief but very informative post when, among other things in a recent comment, he said: “We all make mistakes--except for Bob who does us the service of pointing them out--but some are so atrocious as to mark one as ignorant in a generalized way.”

If you have a sentence you would like Editor Bob to comment on, forget them cards and letters as they are very old school, but keep them comments coming.

8 comments:

  1. This is the sentence I would like Bob to consider : Blogger authorities have sentenced Bob to five years hard labour for pedantry.

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  2. Me and him aint got no quarrel with you're analysis.

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  3. you are doing this grqmmer thing cause you miss the ole putz

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  4. And when did 'those' become redundant in favour of 'them'? I can be pedantic, too...

    Other pet hates... 'for free', 'could of' and 'your' for 'you're', or vice versa...and let's not get into 'its' and 'it's' !

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  5. Here's one for you, RWP:

    "Let's you and me go to town and get them cheese and them license."

    I declare under oath (which I take very seriously) that I have heard "them cheese" and "them license" spoken in my presence.

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  6. I dare not comment, since I don't know my whos from my whoms or who's from my whom's. But at least I have a good excuse.
    And just to be sure: he and I went to town?

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  7. Suppose you know the sentence which got author Lynne Truss up on her high horse about the correct use of commas (and made her a fortune with best-selling book on punctuation); apparently a zoo sign regarding pandas should have read "Eats shoots and leaves", but actually read "Eats, shoots and leaves" ... a gun-toting panda!

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  8. Thanks, everyone, for commenting. I will respond to your comments in my next post.

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...