Irregardless of what you think....

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This past Friday I was reading our base newspaper and an active duty Air Force columnist quoted Wikipedia for a reference to Air Force history.

I shot her an e-mail and told her how unreliable Wikipedia is and how inappropriate it was for her as an Air Force member, writing in Air Force newspaper, to quote Wikipedia on matters relating to Air Force history. She apologized and then went on to say that the base historian had contacted her to let her know that the Wiki article was completely incorrect. Go figure...

I also had to shoot an e-mail to another writer for the same paper about her use of the term "jimmy-rigged" in an article. Now I've heard of jury-rigged or even its bastardized form, jerry-rigged, but never jimmy-rigged...
 
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My wife uses "orientate" all the time and it drive me nuts. I began to hear it used so many places that I wasn't sure if I was correct or not. When I looked it up I found most references to say that it was not a word, but other references that said it was. The best explanation I found was that it is common in British English, but is considered incorrect in the U.S.

Can you use that in a sentence? I'm having a difficult time "envisioning" it. Orientate as opposed to ...?

Usually it's in reference to orientation. "We took a newcomers' orientation course. They orientated us to the local area."

I just asked her to use it in a sentence:

"They orientated the compass." I told her "No... They oriented the compass." She just looked at me funny.
 
I have to restrain myself all the time from correcting spelling, grammar and most of all, punctuation. I realize that no one wants to be corrected unless they ask to be. However, why is it that people who do care about at least trying to write correctly are now being demonized? I would like to see correct English preserved to some extent at least. My son just started community college and said that the instructors are in a panic now because so few students know how to write an essay correctly. I think that's rather sad. So maybe people who don't care about correct English should give it a bit more thought and not be quite so defensive about it. I don't think anyone of us wants to see an entire generation grow up without knowing how to use their native language.
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Before I get off my soapbox, can I just share my pet peeve? It's the widespread misuse of the apostrophe S. It's only used for pluralization at the end of acronyms and abbreviations, ok?!
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I helped my oldest son with an essay question for a college application the other day. I was absolutely horrified. He's a smart kid, but I never realized that he could barely put together a coherent sentence on paper. I told him he needs to work on basic grammar and take a writing course before he gets to his freshman year of college.

As far as apostrophe "s" goes. What about contractions and possessive forms?

"My father's home."

"It's nice."

"Its color is nice"

"It's" as in "it is" is proper as a contraction, while "its" is proper for possessive use.
 
A neighbor stopped by this past weekend to chat (random drop-ins are my pet peeve). I mentioned that a friend was looking at some property on the street named "Versailles". I pronounced it Ver-sigh. He had no idea what I was talking about. After a bit more conversation, he finally said "Are you talking about Ver-sails?" Yes, yes I was. He then proceeded to give me grief about my pronounciation. Clearly as an Alabama girl I should have known better. He blamed it on all the da** yankees I work with over at the university.
I love living out here.
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I waked up at 4:30 am in the morning, the rooster's was crowing. I orientated myself to the sound, and throwed a rock to shut them boys up.

Where I went to college, a rhetoric class was required for everyone, unless you had a 5 on the AP exam. Writing a well reasoned, grammatically correct essay was considered a basic of education. I once had a math major friend complain about a test score in an upper level class. He had four points taken off for math errors, and 10 four English errors. That being said, I still can't spell and make many errors, especially in this kind of writing. But when I was in the working world I was surprised by the number of educated people I met who could not write coherently.

I have a Scottish friend who uses orientated; it sounded wrong to me, but I think it is just an accepted ususage in Brittish English. After ten years in this country, she still occasionaly gets a blank look from her friends at a certain word we've never heard before.
 
Ohhh, I love regional pronunciations and words. They are so much fun and they are being lost in the tuned-in world.

Pierre, SD is pronounced peer
bubbler is what some in Wisconsin call a drinking fountain
out the road is what Alaskans call anyplace away from town
Outside is anything out of Alaska

and here in Texas:
Bexar is bear
Manchaca is manshack
Burnet is burn it
juniper is cedar (and all of it should die die DIE!!!!! Excuse me, cedar fever season is starting)
can't think of others now
 

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