<p>“conversate” makes me cringe, when I think they mean converse. Probably think it means conversation.<br>
And, the improper conjugation of “to be”, as in “I’ve been knowing him five years” instead of “I 've known him for five years.”
Of course, I see a real distinction between informality/slang among friends compared to speaking English when appropriate.</p>
<p>Today, I read a layman’s letter to the editor in our local paper. I happened to agree with the writer. Unfortunately, he had so many spelling mistakes, that I came away with more recollection of his poor English than recollection of his topic. I suspect those errors will make his point less persuasive because he just doesn’t look very bright.</p>
<p>Not in my experience. On a related note, I recall that my eighth-grade English teacher was a regular culprit of using the possessive case for any plural nouns that appeared at the end of a sentence until I set her straight.</p>
<p>The joys of a Catholic school education in the 60s and 70s - punctuation and diagramming sentences were part of the lessons every year. I also had a HS English teacher who marked me down for every grammatical/punctuation error made. To this day I fear a green pen. </p>
<p>While I am by no means perfect, I do try to avoid the obvious mistakes. :)</p>
<p>I would not completely disagree with Silverturtle. When my son was around 3, a friend of mine asked me if we corrected his grammar. The answer was “no, because he already sounds like a little professor”. When he was in middle school, a friend of his commented on his precise speech or maybe his lack of slang usage. In order to fit in, he started talking differently–at least with his friends. I am happy that he has learned when it is appropriate to use less formal speech with his friends but knows to speak differently when the occasion calls for it.</p>
<p>This is one of the things that I have found to be most lacking at my high school; I don’t know whether this is reflective of a general trend, though. Teachers mark perhaps two to five percent of the grammatical errors in students’ essays, claiming that it’s not their job to fix mistakes that the students should have previously learned. Well, the problem is that earlier teachers didn’t teach us grammar because they thought that the high-school teachers would take care of it. Moreover, grammar and mechanics usually make up about five points of the grade on a 250-point essay. Whenever I proofread the essays of even the strongest students in our class, I find twenty to thirty mistakes per double-spaced page. When I point them out, the students care very little because they think that fixing them would have merely a negligible effect on their grades; and they are, unfortunately, correct. Partly, this is attributable to my keen sense for finding grammatical errors; more importantly, however, it reflects how little grammar and clarity are stressed.</p>
<p>I <em>noted</em> but did not correct every single grammar and spelling error that I found in the chemistry lab reports that I required of my students back when I taught chemistry. Parents often commented that I was more thorough in my reading than the English teachers (and assigned more actual writing). </p>
<p>(My grading rubrick, which students were given with the assignment, assigned 10% to grammar, spelling, punctuation and correct formatting. The use of such an explicit rubrick was also a surprise to parents, who were used to what I would term “holistic grading”. IMHO, having a single letter on the first page is useless to the student. I also allowed students to earn back (up to) half the points they’d lost by resubmitting the assignment with corrections.)</p>
The question that you’ve hedged here with the (m) is one that I see a lot of confusion about, so it’s worth addressing here: when any form of “who” is used to introduce a subordinate clause, its case is determined by the role of the pronoun in the subordinate clause, not by the role of the clause in the sentence. So here, you should use the subjective “whoever” because the pronoun is the subject of the clause (you would say “he was in charge…” not “him was in charge…”). The confusion arises because the pronoun appears to be the object of the main clause, but it’s the whole subordinate clause (“whoever was in charge of teaching the simplest of rules”) that is the object, not just the introductory pronoun.</p>
<p>this has been around many times, timeflew.
I could care less, if taken literally, would mean that a person is indifferent to how much they care and no harm would result in caring less.
I couldn’t care less, if taken literally is used to mean I care zero now, so caring less is impossible.</p>
<p>Both however, of these are expressions; they both are used to indicate the speaker is indifferent to the topic and therefore does not have a great care one way or the other.
One phrase may sound better to the ear, but both expressions are correctly used for the same meaning.</p>
<p>Timeflew is correct though, that “irregardless” is a word that is considered substandard English.</p>
<p>As I said (twice), I’m no exception. But I respect, your right, to be driven crazy by my mistake’s as much as anyone’s else’s, and to see how ironic it is, as long as, you understand that I was never trying to be holier-than-anyone, and, would prefer not, to be perceived as a hypocrite.</p>
<p>jasmom, I think the strictly correct form of that question would be “I have a hard time with his being in charge” – “being in charge” is a noun phrase and the preceding pronoun should really be a possessive. You can see this by substituting a single noun for the noun phrase–you wouldn’t say “I have a hard time with him ascendancy,” you’d say “I have a hard time with his ascendancy.”</p>