Monday, August 06, 2007

Vanishing "ly"

As I was driving to work this morning, I was subjected to a moment that is(unfortunately) growing more frequent in number. A moment, an occurrence, a... thing that gnaws on my consciousness, works my last nerve and downright irritates me.

It was a missing "ly".

Two DJ's were having a conversation with someone (sorry, I can't remember who), during which that person commented, "I do that bad."

"LY!" I piped up. "You do that BADLY."

Poor Tag is subjected to my grammar corrections on a regular basis. However, unless I'm asked to proof-read a document or listen to a public speaker practice, I try not to burst out like a schoolmarm for the general populace. (To my defence, I come by it naturally. My mother was a grammar/literature teacher for the first 30+ years of my life, and I was drilled on the ability to articulate both clearly and properly.)

I willingly admit that my sentence structure is not always the best, and my spelling can be downright deplorable. Add to that the fact that I'm slightly dyslexic, and type too quickly for my own good... and I'm sure that you can find more than a handful of errors in the archives of this blog.

However comma I still retain the ability to tell an adjective from an adverb.

For example: the tea can be bad (ill-flavored); the dog can be bad (poorly behaved); the paper can be bad (not enjoyable for reading), but that's probably because it was written (<-VERB) badly.


*sigh* Sorry to rant so, but it hurts my head when I hear it spoken incorrectly.


Helpful links:

Adverbs: definition, adverbs in history and other useful links (including a quiz)


the brilliant lyrics to Tom Lehere's "L-Y"


or best yet, sing along with Lolly, Lolly, Lolly

If it's an adverb we have it at Lolly's!

Bring along your old adjectives too, like slow, soft and sure.

We'll fit them out with our "l-y" attachment

And make perfectly good adverbs out of them
!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know what I hate? I hate that people like us feel like we have to apologize for being sticklers about correct grammar. I mean, why do *we* have to apologize? They're the ones who are wrong!

The bain of my existence? Irregardless. I cannot stand that utterance (I won't even call it a word).

sundaycynce said...

The one that really drives me crazy is the misuse of compound pronouns. People always want to say "Name and I"; sometimes it's supposed to be "Name and me." What ever you would say if you were doing it by yourself is correct.
"Jo and I are going to the mall. Do you want to go with Jo & me?" None of us would ever say "Do you want to go with I?" It's really got to do with nominative and objective case, but almost nobody cares about that---but the "..if you were doing it by yourself" rule usually makes it easy enough for everyone.

Anonymous said...

I broke up with more many a guy because of his poor grammar. My thought was, "I was born and raised in a Spanish speaking country and worked on getting it right, so should you!".

A personal pet peeve of mine is "broke" used in a present tense as in, "That lamp is broke".

Shit, now I'm worried about my grammar in this post. :)

Anonymous said...

AACK! See? I did "more many" by typing too fast!

the slackmistress said...

I blame MAC. I wanted to mark up every "Think Different" billboard soooooooooooo badLY.

Anonymous said...

@Slack -

I did mark up every MAC sign during that campaign while in Chicago.

Of course I also marked up every iPod ad as well with my trademark "iRobot" or "iConsume," neither of which have anything to do with grammar. LOL

Anonymous said...

I thought of this post when I saw this. Grammar lovers, unite!