Most people can't use "I" versus "me" correctly, including most academics:
My student and me...went to a conference. Susie and me... saw that new movie. UGH! For most people in America English is their only language, yet they can hardly ever speak it grammatically correctly. Of course, having added to this rant, I now have to watch what I post here. YIKES! Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> ________________________________ From: Helweg-Larsen, Marie [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 5:38 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE:[tips] Data usage It also doesn’t help that it says on all the fast checkout lanes in Walmart: less than 10 items. Marie **************************************************** Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS), +45 2065 1360 Dickinson College (on leave 2010/2011) http://users.dickinson.edu/~helwegm/index.html **************************************************** From: Pollak, Edward [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 14:32 To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Data usage Claudia Stanny wrote: “Speaking for myself, reading "the data is" makes me cringe, grind my teeth, and reach for a very sharp red pencil! ……… When I read "data" a part of me always substitutes words like numbers, observations, findings.” Claudia, is it possible that you are a long lost sister of mine? Our grammatical sensitivities seem to be identical.. Let’s check this hypothesis of grammatical kinship with one more pet peeve: It annoys me no end when someone says e.g., “less people buy American-made cars.” To my mind, it should be “fewer people.” If the referent occurs in discrete units (e.g., people, cars, trees, doillars, etc.) you use the adjective “fewer.” But if the referent is a more general concept or continuous, less discrete you use the word (water, forest, money) “less.” So there are fewer trees and there may be less forested land. There are more people chasing fewer dollars but more people chasing less capital. This seems obvious to me but it is so often breached that I’m beginning to question myself. It’s so common to have a colleague say “I have less students in my class this semester.” Or a newscaster says “The U.S. sold less cars this year.” This jars my grammatical sensibilities. So………….. am I the only one who gets irked by this issue? Surely my purported grammatical soul mate, Claudia must have the same reaction. Ed Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Department of Psychology West Chester University of Pennsylvania Office hours: Mondays noon-2 & 3-4; Tuesdays & Thursdays 8-9:15 & 12:30-2 http://home.comcast.net/~epollak/home.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, & bluegrass fiddler...... in approximate order of importance. From: Claudia Stanny <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Speaking for myself, reading "the data is" makes me cringe, grind my teeth, and reach for a very sharp red pencil! :-) [just recently finished editing a slew of "data .... is" constructions to "data .... are" in a colleague's prose] When I read "data" a part of me always substitutes words like numbers, observations, findings. All plural (so far). --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13234.b0e864a6eccfc779c8119f5a4468797f&n=T&l=tips&o=8962 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-8962-13234.b0e864a6eccfc779c8119f5a44687...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-8962-13234.b0e864a6eccfc779c8119f5a44687...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a21b0&n=T&l=tips&o=8963 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-8963-13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a2...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-8963-13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a2...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=8976 or send a blank email to leave-8976-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
