Rant ON!

Today some woman came in to see me at work and she brought an ENGLISH TEXTBOOK with her, and she had a page selected and a paragraph circled. A month or so ago I typed up a story she had written about her trip to Scotland, and if I had gone through it like I'd go through a student's "What I did this summer" essay - it would have been full of red. But whatever. When people bring stuff in and its not perfect, we correct the glaring errors and maybe re-word a little if its necessary for clarity - but if they're telling the story, we let them tell it.

ANYWAY, she proceeded to teach me (myself?) a lesson on the use of the words 'me', 'myself'' and 'I' and she even shared the handy tip she'd looked up to make it easier for me to know when to use one or the other, and isn't it curious how people use 'myself' so often when actually, its wrong to do so! My jaw was on the floor. She said that her daughter (an English teacher, apparently!) thought the article was well written, but she couldn't believe that a newspaper would leave in such a glaring grammatical error.

First, I don't recall typing every sentence of the very, very long story I typed over a month ago, second, I would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS correct her copy if it said "My husband and I" to read "My husband and myself" - so what the heck is she doing in here? Finally, it dawned on me. She wrote it that way (my husband and myself) and she was coming in to take ME to task for not correcting it when we published HER story. WTF?!

Anyway, it was actually kind of funny, the way she laid it on so thick that her daughter is an English teacher. So am I, but we (or at least I, or should I say, I, myself...) don't go around correcting everyone else's random English unless its really, really awful. She also informed me that the Rec. director constantly makes the same mistake in his weekly report (don't I know it?!? How many 'myselfs' do you think I take out in a week?!?) and *gasp* the editor himself sometimes uses 'myself' in his writing.

My goodness. I'll be the first to admit that my English has been backsliding severely in the past 7 years or so, since I'm not teaching anymore, and I'm living in a French-speaking town with a husband who has a lot of his own quirks and adjustments to the language. I've adopted a lot of those quirks, and I don't mind. Because as much as I like English and grammar, I can get pretty flexible with the rules, myself. (heee.) I think its okay to write like you speak, especially if you're telling a story. How expressive can we be if we don't break the rules now and then? Yes, we have an editor, but that doesn't mean we re-work everything until it would get an A+ in English class. The paper would be pretty dry reading if we made sure all the rules were followed.

Maybe she's just getting back at me for phoning her to clarify a few details before I typed it up. She wasn't impressed when I pointed out (very politely!) that the ship she visited was not the 'sister ship' of the Titanic as her story claimed. I used to teach history as well -- I know where the Titanic's sister ships ended up, and this lady wasn't touring either of them. I might let a pile of grammatical errors slide, there'll be NO messing with the historical facts. ;) For the record, I also changed 'the eighth wonder of the world' to 'CLAIMING TO BE the eighth wonder of the world' - accuracy is important, you know. ;) If you didn't visit the actual eighth wonder of the world, you'd better make that clear.