Grammarvelous #1: Gold Meddling

Today I start my first monthly column and I'm so excited. If you've ever hung out with me IRL (in real life), sent me an email or tagged me in a Facebook post, it may have crossed your mind that my mental red pen might do some automated editing. Well, I find that assumption insulting. True, but insulting. I admit it's beyond my control and I find it funner* than most other things I learned as a student.

Sure, when we were in school, we were spared the Common Core and all its flaws, but we did have to take on other cockamamy things such as diagramming sentences -- possibly the most dreadful assignment ever. I still have no idea what it was all about or why we had to do it, but I'm sure it was enough to get most of the class to tune out subsequent lessons. Yes I love grammar, but don't pretend to know everything. So in the words of the dreamy Troy Bolton, "We're all in this together."

Let's kick off with a really obvious mistake -- and one you've probably never made and are in no danger of ever making -- so we can all feel really good about our linguistical prowess. Mostly I just thought it was funny and sometimes funny just wins over practical.

A few days ago I watched about 5 minutes of Dancing With the Stars and boy, was it totally worth it. I actually heard a certain celebrity contestant (for the record, English is his first language; and yes, I'd be more merciful with the heavily-accented Eastern European professional dancers) describe his debut dance as "an outer body experience." I know! I couldn't believe it either! Of course we all know he actually had an outer brain experience when he meant to say "out-of-body experience".

See, don't you feel smart? But alas, that certain celebrity contestant has a gold medal in ice dancing and all we have is our high horse.

Join me next month for Grammarvelous #2! And if something has been stumping you, please send in your questions, conundrums or queries. I'll keep them anonymous of course.

* Testing you! While not accepted as a real word, many people use "funner" informally albeit incorrectly.