Grammar

Most of the people who read this column do so because they enjoy learning about grammar, usage and style. Like me, they actually find the stuff interesting and useful. But now that I think about it: Why should they have all the fun? I mean, aren't I just discriminating against all of you out there who despise learning about grammar? When will it be your turn? Well today's your lucky day, all you disgruntled high-school students and Yale-educated leaders of the free world. Because today I offer you the best ammo ever in your battles to prove that English is nothing but a colossal pain in the fanny.

You are reading a grammar column. Fascinating. There are a number of possible explanations for this unusual behavior. Perhaps you?re waiting for the UPS man to arrive with your Amazon shipment of reading material that?s actually interesting. Perhaps this morning you replaced your regular coffee with Irish coffee, and somewhere around your fourth cup, decided that reading about grammar would be a ?!%&@ ! hoot.? But at a time when the stock market is starting to remind you of Calista Flockhart on Atkins and home values are starting to look like car values ?

blr-aword10TextG822KEUDA WORD, PLEASE As Americans, we love it when our choices come down to absolute extremes: black or white, right or wrong, good or bad. If we could, we'd categorize everything in terms of dog people vs. cat people, liberal vs. conservative, Rosie vs. Donald. I used to shun such distinctions, especially the idea that the population can be divided into cat people and dog people. Then I got four cats. Now I can say with 100% certainty that I'm a dog person.

It's a billboard custom-tailored to grammar buffs. "Every day we help people get back to their everyday," proclaims the ad for Keck Medical Center of USC. In that single sentence, the copy writer does more to help people with grammar than I probably will in this whole column. But I'll give it a long-winded shot anyway. The best thing about this line of marketing copy, grammar-wise at least, is that it succinctly illustrates something far too few people know - that both every day and everyday are valid forms.

I have a confession to make. I?ve always been insensitive to allergy sufferers. Growing up in a depressed Florida suburb, it seemed that only the spoiled kids had allergies (?spoiled? meaning anyone who knew both their parents and didn?t drink milk purchased with food stamps because their mom needed all their cash for cigarettes and jug-shaped containers of wine). These were the kids who got taken to doctors even when they weren?t doubled over in pain or bleeding to death. Spoiled brats.