In his latest column, William Cafferky discusses the most annoying misuses of grammar.
Recently it was revealed that Harris Academy in Croydon had banned the use of slang words amongst its students. They argue the ban is supposed to encourage students to present themselves confidently and appropriately. However the school’s clamp down on poor grammar has been met by grumbles of discontent from some academic linguists.
As much as it pains me to admit, I am far from a grammaticist. Despite this, I do find myself frequently disgruntled by the numerous errors I encounter every day. Here are but a few of the most testing of these blunders:
Double Negatives
Most people, myself included, can remember little from our early years of maths lessons. However, one of the fundamentals I can recall was the notion that two negatives are equal to a positive. Nonetheless, this most basic of principles seems to have completely bypassed almost an entire sector of society; the music industry. We’ve all heard them, those classic songs rendered almost nonsensical due to their misuse of the double negative. From Marvin Gaye’s upbeat “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to Pink Floyd’s marvelously hypocritical “We Don’t Need No Education”, songs have been passively fueling erroneous lyricists for decades.
“Literally”
Before I begin, I want to confess that I too misuse this word frequently; this does not however inhibit my passionate distaste for doing so. We’ve all been there, one of our closest friends is engaging us in an enthusiastic tale of woeful humiliation, only to conclude by saying “…and then I literally died of embarrassment.” In cases such as these, perhaps redemption can be found in the claim that the phrase was a mere exaggeration. Unfortunately, much as words such as “like” and “basically”, “literally” has crept deeper and deeper into our daily vocabulary to the extent whereby comments such as “I’m literally so tired” and “I literally can’t think of anything to do” are commonplace. To my horror, a friend recently informed me that Oxford and Google have now officially changed their definition of literally to encompass “metaphorically”, or also as a way to “add emphasis”. It would appear then, that this particular battle has been lost…literally.
“Sat rather than sitting”
This particular bugbear is another that carries a confession. It was not until a year or so ago that I was made aware of this common error, yet now that it has been highlighted it is perhaps the most irritating. Similar to discovering that your new best friend fails to blink or has a terrible laugh, once you realize the grammatical error of people’s ways it becomes ever so noticeable. How often do we hear the term “I was sat…” or “I am sat…” without a care in the world? However, if we accept, that the relationship between sat and sitting is the same as the one between ran and running, the mistake is easily noticeable. Whilst the sentence, “I was running through the rain” is perfectly uncontroversial, “I was ran through the rain” could perhaps conjure up images of someone gently dragging me through the rain, as if I were a comb.
Irony, Coincidence and Misfortune.
The word “ironic” is seemingly extremely popular and yet widely misunderstood. It doesn’t help that an exact definition of what irony is, is somewhat disputed. Nevertheless, we do know what irony isn’t. Perhaps the most recognised example of its abuse is in Alanis Morissette’s hit song “Ironic”. In fact, of all the 11 attempts that the song makes to recall ironic situations, only 1 or 2 are truly successful. For example, she refers to “a free ride, when you’ve already paid” which is merely an example of poor scheduling. Meanwhile, “rain on your wedding day” is just plain bad luck. This situation would be ironic, if your fiancé were a weather girl who had forecast clear skies, and thus planned the wedding for this particular day. Admittedly, this would have been a rather wordy verse for a pop song, but then perhaps irony wasn’t the best subject to tackle.
These are but a few common and exasperating mistakes; you may well have your own favourites. It is clear that mainstream culture is rife with grammatical errors, and perhaps this is the reasoning behind Harris Academy’s seemingly extreme decision. There is something arguably unnatural in supressing the evolution of language, which is the case argued by some who condemn the school’s decision. Unfortunately, for irritable folk like me, there’s a downside to allowing language to adapt organically: it makes the war on bad grammar seemingly unwinnable.
William Cafferky, Features Columnist
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