At work today I had the chance... wrong word... duty... no... burden!... not harsh enough... hellish experience of editing some text penned by colleagues.
I will hazard that the most common error (in English) is the unnecessary apostrophe, most commonly seen when it’s is mistakenly substituted for its. Funny, I never see hi’s or her’s, but it’s seems to have a cobra-like fascination.
But for second place in frequency, and first in how irritating I find it, is the persistent confusion of lie and lay.
After fixing a few of those, I recalled an episode from a few years ago. I was talking to a neighbor couple, and the husband kept saying to their golden retriever: “Lay down! Lay down!” Frustrated by the doggie’s noncompliance, he asked his wife why he (the dog) wouldn’t listen. She replied, “Because he speaks better English than you do?”
The only way one can lay down is to glue a coating of little feathers to the floor. I have yet to see it.
Sorry, folks. Venting. Engineers cannot write. Argh.
— Frenulum
Lay v Lie...a persistent problem of mine. Hence my joke in A Coach's Life between the chemistry teacher and the English teacher turned high school principal. Now, if that was my only problem with the English language... :o)
ReplyDeletePoking fun at yourself is one of the pleasures a good writer can enjoy :o) Thanks again for giving me an advance peek at ACL!
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