Grammar Ninja: Parallel Structure

Grammar Ninja is back with a rant inspired by a sign posted at the Ottawa airport.

Grammar Ninja: Encyclopedias and Babies

Don't be deceived by my radio silence, my grammar-loving friends. Grammar Ninja is alive and well and biting her tongue on a regular basis. Today's rant is short & sweet.

Endangered-Grammar List: My Top Four

Grammar Ninja isn't back. She never really left. 

The other day, one of my favourite Facebook pages posted the following:

What caught my attention was the question they asked: Is the apostrophe endangered?

Grammar Ninja: Don't give up!

A friend of mine recently shared her frustration with an e-conversation she was having with someone who firmly believed that spelling, grammar, and punctuation were not worth fussing about. This educated woman (former linguist) genuinely had no problem with such spellings as awsome, discusting, and rubarb.

This person also felt that loose and lose would soon be interchangeable as valid alternative spellings.

Excuse me while I grab my smelling salts and drape myself carefully across this divan.

Grammar Ninja: Close, but no cigar.

There are many words that are close, oh, so very close, but not quite the word we mean. Today, I saw this line:

Then on a more tactile [sic] level, whether it’s locking yourself to something or blockading a building, it’s around doing things that really wake people up—that are jarring and make people pay attention to how people have been oppressed for generations. (From Meet the Badass Activist Collective Bringing Direct Action Back to Black Communities)

So close.

Grammar Ninja: Who's and Whose

Since none of you has sent me a grammar question (one wonders what it is you do all day if it is not pondering grammar), I am compelled, nay, obliged, to come up with a topic of my own choosing. So here's today's discussion: who's versus whose.

Grammar Ninja: Loving Latin

Whenever I see spelling or grammatical errors, I have to remind myself that not everyone took Latin for two years in high school and for another year in university. (I also studied Old Norse for a semester.)

Introducing the Grammar Ninja!

To start with, I object to the title "Grammar Nazi:" it implies that those of us who love grammar will stop at nothing to exert our delusional ideals. That is not the case with me. While I have an OCD-style compulsion to notice typos and grammatical errors, I care more about the people in my life, so I make no comment, most of the time.

Also: my ideals are not delusional.