I’m “fed” up

Generally I’m not one to fret too much about the ongoing evolution of language. Slang doesn’t bother me; in fact, I was amused and more pleased than not when “bootylicious” made the OED. I’ll generally argue on the side of communicative flexibility in questions of what’s correct (e.g. the begging of questions). And, of course, “embiggen”, “unpossible”, and “cromulent” are, well, perfectly cromulent words in my book.

I’ll admit that I find the chronic misuse of other aspects of our language more irritating. The contraction “it’s” and the possessive “its” just aren’t that hard to keep straight, and the frequency with which I see intelligent and otherwise literate-seeming people use “apostrophe’s” [sic] where none are required continues to baffle me.

I am far from a grammar or language snob, really. I’ve never been an English teacher, and my grammar skills are only passable. I’ll carelessly interchange “I’m doing good” and “I’m doing well”, for example, even though I technically know better. I struggle with “affect” vs. “effect” from time to time, and I probably don’t google for help every time I should, thus occasionally contributing to our language’s slide towards an exclusively phonetic standard of communicativeness. While I happily work with and respect many people who have a copy of Strunk & White on their desk at the office, I don’t even know which shelf contains the copy we have at home.

With all that said, I put gratuitous quotes with “its” vs. “it’s” and errant apostrophes on the list of annoying and common errors. While driving down I-94 earlier in the week, I saw a semi cab with the following painted on the back:

My way “is” the highway

Obviously, this is intended as some sort of amusing twist on “my way or the highway”. Regardless of its humor content (or lack thereof), why in the world is “is” in quotes? “Is” isn’t being discussed, as it is in this sentence. This isn’t a case of using quotes to identify an ironic use of a word (examples here). “Is” is the verb, for crying out loud!

Given the patterns this usage clearly does not fit, I can only assume that the intent of this airbrushing was emphatic, as in “My way is the highway” or “My way is the highway”.

I’ve noticed this use of quotes a fair bit lately, and I think that may have to do with the increasing use of largely plain text communications media (email, IM, text messaging). For some reason, the geek-popular _inline_ _underline_ isn’t very popular (I suppose non-geeks don’t have much use for the underscore). If plain text emphasis without underscores is the goal, I’d personally find *this* approach preferable, as it at least doesn’t overlap with other existing notation.

As I drove down I-94, thinking about the “is” situation, I remembered the sign one of the english teachers in my high school had posted in a hall-facing window every student walked by thousands of times before graduating. The sign read:

A lot is two words.

And I don’t think I’ve ever even paused to consider writing “alot”. The gratuitous quote situation could use similar handling, in my opinion. Just today I saw a sign at a retail clothing store that read:

Buy one, get one “free”

(Is it not really free?)

It’s fortunate, in times like this, that the Internet has decentralized and distributed the power once held only by high school English teachers. Now, thanks to a few minutes with the GIMP and cafepress, “you too” can help spread the word

:

To start I’ve just made a 3×5″ sticker ($2.49 at cost) – I can easily make other shapes or items available if there’s interest.