SNOB HORROR STORIES
At long last, a place where you
can commiserate with other grammar snob victims, and by sharing your harrowing
experiences, achieve closure and ultimately peace.
E-mail me your Snob Horror Stories at JuneTCN@aol.com.
I’ll post them here. We’ll laugh. We’ll cry. We’ll omit the snobs’ names so we
don’t get sued. And together, we shall overcome.
A letter I got from Steve P. in
Many semesters
ago, I was in the 4th or 5th grade in
"b-i-b-l-e" I answered.
Are you ahead of me on this?
"Wrong,"
said the impatient teacher. "It's capital 'b.'"
And here's snob horror story about a contender for most
irritating snob of all time.
June:
I am an 8th grade
language arts teacher. Our grammar snob is another teacher who is, of course,
younger, prettier, and smarter than I am. She delights in pointing out
errors to the rest of us.
She is the first
to gleefully forward an administrator's email whenever she can find a
mistake. Generally, unless I really don't like the sender, I read the
email for content and move on with my life. While I am certainly not
above laughing loudly at an unfortunate dangling modifier, I am not always in
edit mode. This teacher will even pick up a test from another teacher's desk to
ferret out any mistakes. Recently she picked up a test from a history
teacher's desk and said, after reading the word elegy, "Don't you mean
'eulogy'?" No, she did not.
When we speak to
her about pointing out the grammatical mistakes of others, she just rants that
we can't expect the kids to speak correctly if we don't speak correctly
ourselves. I heard her once say, "Why didn't you just send him to
Marla and I?" Did I correct her in front of the other nine teachers
in the room? No, it would have been rude. Do I wish I had? To this very
day.
I know I should
let some of this go. It is my fault I let it bother me. And fester as it
does. I am still angry that two years ago she corrected me in a room full
of other teachers. We were discussing the state playoff game we were going to
that night. It was going to be unusually cold, so I said, "Dress
warm." This sent her into a lengthy explanation in front of everyone about
"warm" being an adjective and therefore could not be used to modify
the verb "dress." She went on to tell me that I should have said,
"Dress warmly." I explained to her that I was just trying to
make sure no one got hypothermia since I was the one charged with checking the
temperature for game time. She explained that she has to correct bad
grammar whenever she hears it. It still stings. Two years
later. Did I mention there were several other teachers in the room?
Did I mention I teach language arts so it made me look incompetent in front of
everyone?
Was "dress warm" such an idiotic mistake that I should still be
cringing two years later? (Click
here to read a column on the subject.)
I feel somewhat
comforted to know there are others in the world who are
bothered by people like this. When I bought your book, the bookstore
owner asked me if I would like the bumper sticker. I plan to laminate it
and put it in the front of my classroom. I want to make the point to my
students that there is a difference between wanting to teach them to
communicate better and wanting to bully them. I will also make sure my
own grammar snob sees it. Unfortunately, she will never even realize it
applies to her!
Here’s one of my more recent brushes with grammar
snobbery:
To: June
From: Grammar Snob Who Reads
June’s Column:
I noticed that you ended the
column by using the adverb "hopefully" as a substitute for "I
hope that ..." or "It is hoped that ..."
I know you know better than to use substandard English.
To: Grammar Snob Who Reads
June’s Column
From: June
"Hopefully ... was widely
condemned from the 1960s to the 1980s. Briefly, the objections are that (1)
'hopefully' properly means 'in a hopeful manner' and shouldn't be used in the
radically different sense 'I hope' or 'it is to be hoped.'
... Whatever the merits of these arguments, the battle is now over.
'Hopefully is now a part of (American English) and it has all but lost its
traditional meaning. ... If you use it in the traditional way, many readers
will think it odd; if you use it in the newish way, a few readers will tacitly tut-tut you." - Bryan
Garner, Garner's Modern American Usage.
hope-fully
adv.
1 in a hopeful manner
2 it is to be hoped (that) “to leave early, hopefully by six” - Webster's
New World College Dictionary.
Grammar Snob’s Reply:
June:
I don’t consider the battle
over until all of us grammar purists cave in. I will always cringe when I hear
a sentence begun with “hopefully.”
June, Realizing the Futility
of Continuing the Conversation, Doesn’t Bother to Write Back With the Obviously
Reply:
How dare the dictionary try to
trump your authority! Please let us know when and if you ever grant us
permission to use “hopefully” this way.
Grammar Snob Adds:
Not only am I tut-tutting you, I'm questioning
the validity of the word "newish."
June, Even Further Convinced
of the Futility of Continuing the Conversation, Doesn’t Bother to Write Back
With the Obvious Reply:
Word + Suffix = New Word. If
it’s a legitimate word and it’s a legitimate suffix, then the new word is valid
whether or not it’s in the dictionary. That’s the beauty of the English
language (which, ironically, is lost on grammar snobs).