You're 'Me,' Not 'Myself,' and Other Grammar Peeves

No one wants to teach grammar because it's not fun: Kim Brooks

(NEWSER) - Sometimes, while Kim Brooks is grading essays by her college composition students, she cries. "Not real tears, exactly—more a spontaneous, guttural sob, often loud and unpleasant enough to startle my husband or children," she writes in Salon . Why? Because many of these students "simply ... cannot write." They don't have basic skills, like knowing how to organize paragraphs, how to write a thesis statement, how to outline, how to proofread or edit, or even "how to make sure their sentences contain a subject and a verb." Is this the fault of the traditional high-school English class, full of class discussion but little writing and almost no grammar education? More»

'Whatever' is worst; 'like' also highly irritating

(NEWSER) - “Whatever” is, like, the most annoying word in the English language, a poll finds—for the second year in a row, notes Reuters. The Marist survey of more than 1,000 Americans found that almost 39% think “whatever” is the most annoying English word or phrase; runners up were “like,” with 28%, and “you know what I mean,” with 15%. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, “like” was considered the most infuriating. More»

I am so above all the drama. Literally.

(NEWSER) - If you haven't said at least one of these, oh, at least 128 times in casual conversation, you should check that you still have a pulse. Because most of us can't avoid uttering them time and time again, and it just needs to stop, writes Alida Nugent on her Frenemy blog.

• “If there wasn’t (insert person or obstacle here) I would have kicked her ass.” Seriously? When was the last time you got in a fistfight? What's that? Never? Thought so. Furthermore, "I don’t believe you because you are wearing pink and the only thing on your record is a big smiley face stamp."

Study discovers shocking grammar deficiencies

(NEWSER) - Loads of native English speakers lack even a basic understanding of the language, according to a surprising new study from Northumbria University. The researchers gathered a group of adults, some of whom were postgraduates students, and some who had dropped out of school at age 16, and tested them on the meaning of a series of fairly simple sentences, like, "The soldier was hit by the sailor." More»

Standards editor calls it 'jargon'

(NEWSER) - The cool kids may call their Twitter posts “tweets,” but no one ever accused the New York Times of being a cool kid. Phil Corbett, the Times’ new standards editor, has sent out a proclamation banning the use of the word “outside of ornithological contexts,” reports the Awl . He argues that the word hasn’t yet “achieved the status of standard English,” and hence isn’t fit for serious news articles. More»