I was taught by the snoots that the correct form is: “He was graduated from high school.” So, I’m sure there are folks looking down their noses at your usage: “He graduated from high school.” As a technical matter, it is no more or less correct than the equally idiomatic: “He graduated high school.”
In my view, all three forms are correct, idiomatic phrases in contemporary American English, with variations in prevalence by region. It is the height of provincialism to assert that your own regional idiom is the only correct one, and that anyone using an equally idiomatic variant is an uneducated slob.
I had a similar situation in my previous job. I was asked to edit/proof book chapters written by my department head, who is a well-educated and well-known expert in his field…but someone who could not differentiate lose/loose to save his life! And he was adamant that HIS way was the correct way - it’s loosing weight, not losing weight, because, well, he has a PhD and an MBA and what kind of degree did I have?
Hey, don’t ask me to proof your material if you don’t want to hear the grammatical truth.
Now, that’s terrible! I don’t have a lot of tolerance for errors in professionally copy edited prose, and it is outrageous that someone would insist on errors.
Okay, that would drive me nuts. It’s one thing to say, “oops! I don’t know why I keep doing that!” and quite another to argue that it’s correct. I would probably lose my job over proving him wrong, lol.
Just show him the dictionary definitions of those two words, along with links to several web sites that correct/totally make fun of people that don’t know the difference.
My mom goes nuts when someone mentions “having a Bar or Bat Mitzvah” and goes on at length about the fact that the child becomes Bar Mitzvah, or celebrates becoming Bat Mitzvah. Technically she is correct, but she’s the only one in the family bothered by the common usage.
We’re buying a house and the escrow paperwork contains the boilerplate language “Escrow Holder, it’s employees and officer”. I mentioned it to our escrow officer. She said said has advised management that it should be corrected but “It’s a pre-printed thing within the software - and needs to be changed by somewhere at the software company. I guess they don’t think it to be that big of a deal…and have never changed it.”
I grew up listening to my father who loved to correct the incorrect usage of his friends, and mine! The funny part is that he did with a rich … European accent! Despite being correct, it so happens that the incorrect usage has often become the accepted form. Terms like the moronic and inexplicable “comprised of” or the conflation of celibacy/abstinence made him cringe. I think that he has come to terms that languages do involve and that the trip over the big pond resulted in plenty of linguistic aberrations.
The worst part of it was that he loved to correct the notes sent by the teachers and the school and force me to deliver to the party that offended his sense of grammar and syntax. Unfortunately, the school gave him plenty of ammunition as spelling and proper usage are not universal in education.
As far as the board, the its versus it’s is often the product of the autocorrect features. It can be a PITA. On the other hand, when someone wants to introduce a smart latin word but does not spell it right is pretty laughable. The biggest one on CC is ad nauseum, It’s ad nauseam, folks. Or should I write its ad nauseam!
One of my coworkers uses the word “supposively” on a regular basis. I’m often tempted to send her the second entry from the urban dictionary because she also frequently asks “Why? Why?! WHY!??”:
I wanted to buy a copy for my father’s birthday. When I went to the bookstore I had a “Who’s on First” encounter with the clerk…
"I’m looking for the book “You Could Look It Up”
“OK, what’s the title?”
“You Could Look it Up”. It’s by William Safire.
“I could look it up, but it’s faster if you just tell me the title if you know it”
"The title is “You Could Look it Up”
“Yes, let me get the manager…”
This forum does enjoy wordplay and will call you out on big mistakes. I don’t take it personally.
Or the use of “myself” to sound intelligent when it only has the opposite effect. As in: “He passed the paper to myself” It’s happening more and more often.
And you also capitalize languages.and nationalities.
I must admit I’m confused about this one. Seasons aren’t capitalized, are they? Sometimes when I use the word “fall” (to mean autumn) I want to capitalize it, but I suspect that’s wrong.
Maybe this is just patronizing of me, but a lot of the time I try to avoid getting annoyed at people who don’t know proper usage. A lot of it comes down to education since it’s not something you could necessarily intuit. However, one teacher at my school got on my nerves so much. He would misuse the word “whom” every single time he attempted. It drove me crazy because he was just trying to come off as intelligent, yet he produced the opposite effect of sounding like a pretentious moron.
I sort of disagree. I’m by no means perfect in how I communicate in the written word, but I’d like to think that 95% of the time, I recognize when I might need to check the spelling or usage of a word before I hit ‘send’ on a public forum. And it’s SO easy to do so - that’s why I get so annoyed by people who can’t take the time to do this with pieces they’re going to make available to the public in literature, signs, flyers, etc. They’re basically saying to me - my unwillingness to communicate correctly is more important than what others might think if I make it more difficult for them to read my material. Because incorrectly written stuff does take extra time for the reader to decipher what someone is intending to communicate. It was the basic rule I learned in journalism 101.
