Wednesday, December 17, 2008

There have been complaints. There's no mistake about that

There's an awful trend which should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago. It's regarding sloppy verbal usage of "there is (or there's)" and "there are" and its effect on the written language.

The movie title There's something about Mary shows the correct usage. There is something about her.

But the sentence "there's things about Mary I don't like" is wrong. Think about it: would you write "there is things about Mary I don't like"? Of course not. There are things about her we don't like.

Yet, thanks to laziness, apathy and no one standing up for the language, it is increasingly more common to see such errors.

Check out Google News at any time to see dozens of examples of improper use of today's subject.

(And yes, in quoting someone for a news story some minor correcting of grammar is acceptable -- but I would wager it's just laziness, not journalistic integrity, for so many of the errors you will see when you click that link above)

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