WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!

Grammar maven joins Style lineup

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Parking Illustration
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Parking Illustration

I likely inherited my love of grammar from my mother.

Never did I hear her use her words incorrectly. At family dinners, someone might shout out, "Who wants dessert?"

All the kids would scream, "Me!" "Me!"

Mom would say, "I!"

When someone would call and ask to speak to Norma, she would answer, "This is she."

OK, we teased her once in a while. But that didn't stop her.

When I was studying journalism in graduate school, she would send my letters back to me with corrections marked. She sometimes used a nonsubtle red pen.

She meant well.

Dad was a word lover, too. Rarely can I remember him without The New York Times crossword puzzle in hand.

So I became an English major and then a copy editor. I spent nearly half my life working at a newspaper.

Now I'll be writing a weekly column about grammar for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. And I mean well, too.

I'm here to hear your grammar pet peeves, your word-usage questions and the punctuation issues that befuddle you.

Maybe your last name is Smith, and you cringe when your family gets a letter addressed to "The Smith's" instead of "The Smiths."

Is it maddening when people confuse "there," "they're" and "their"?

Do you wish people

knew the difference between "well" and "good"?

Do you wonder why people randomly add quotation marks where they don't belong?

I want to hear from you about your pet peeves or questions. My email address is at the end of this column.

I'll start with words that unnerve me when people misuse them.

Irregardless

For my mother, "irregardless" was a big one. Yes, it's in the dictionary, but it should be "regardless."

Wrong: Irregardless of what you say, I'm nabbing this last piece of pie.

That's a double negative. That would mean, not not taking note of what you say.

Right: Regardless of what you say, I'm nabbing this last piece of pie.

Meaning, you can beg and plead, but you will not stop me.

Impact

I cringe when I hear "impact" used as a verb instead of a noun.

It's a police term ("The SUV impacted the back of the sedan ...").

It's corporate-speak. (We can help you significantly impact the success of your small business!")

And it sounds painful and a little violent.

Instead of impact, you should use the verb "affect."

Wrong: How does peeling onions impact you?

Right: How does peeling onions affect you?

Between you and I

I think people use this one incorrectly because it sounds a little more formal or confidential.

Wrong: Just between you and I, that company is about to go public.

Right: Just between you and me, that company is about to go public

A good way to remember what's right is to turn the phrase around. You wouldn't say, "The only thing standing between I and the weekend is this self-evaluation for the boss."

UNENDORSE?

In case you haven't noticed, a presidential campaign is here and won't end for a while. I've been seeing a new word in newspapers and other media: "unendorse." Sometimes, the spelling is "un-endorse" (with a hyphen).

You can endorse a candidate, a product or a practice, meaning you give your support. You typically have to be prominent for anyone to report on your endorsement. I doubt Cadbury would care how strongly I support their Fruit and Nut milk chocolate bars.

Unendorse isn't in the Merriam-Webster or American Heritage dictionaries. It's not in the AP Stylebook, the source for most newspaper usage guidelines.

"Unendorsed," an adjective, is in some dictionaries. It means, "not endorsed."

But this more recent usage, a verb, happens when a person has endorsed something or someone and then reverses position.

I'm waiting to see how long the word will take to make its way to the dictionary.

And one more thing...

Ideally, I would have started this column March 4, National Grammar Day. But let's just plan to celebrate in 2017.

Sources: Webster's New World College Dictionary, m-w.com, American Heritage Dictionary, AP Stylebook

Bernadette Kinlaw is here to hear your grammar pet peeves, your word-usage questions and the punctuation issues that befuddle you. Email her at

bkwordmonger@gmail.com

ActiveStyle on 09/05/2016

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