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»

Kids can't write, and it's getting worse

(NEWSER) - Take it from a first-year college instructor: The writing skills of young adults are a joke. "They have either forgotten the rules of writing, or they never learned them in the first place," writes Kara Miller of Babson College. And while the media focuses on the need for better science teachers, "finding, coaching, and retaining good English teachers is an underreported struggle," she writes in the Boston Globe . More»

English as spoken in China may soon become a dialect

(NEWSER) - Some 300 million English speakers in China are altering the language in small but important ways—and may be creating their own dialect, Michael Erard writes in Wired. So-called "Chinglish"—which stresses unique syllables, drops dos and dids, and adds sounds for questions—has already been studied in a Hong Kong exhibit and is used widely in Singapore books and films. 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."