Sometimes Insisting on Good Grammar isn’t a Good Idea

—I’m ignoring the politeness issue in this post. We have an emergency.

I have a rule (it’s a poster on my wall) that bad writing shouldn’t be justified with the excuse that the reader will figure it out. I suppose the rule applies to speaking, too. Emergencies justify a lot of changes to normal behavior.

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Not exactly a lesson today, but a conversation about language. (I’d call it a usage, myself, not a tense.)

At least he defined how the ironic tense works. I wonder what would be the difference between that and a possible sarcasm tense. What would you say?

One function of hyphens is to tie two words together into what we call a compound adjective. The difference in which word (or words) another word modifies can be significant. Lots of humor in this strip, but read the label on the sign.

Now look at the first panel in the bottom row. He reads the sign correctly! Without the hyphen, “no” modifies “pet policy.” If you have a policy that forbids pets, you have to say “no-pet policy.”

PS—I just ran into this. Same lesson, only about the space between words. I found it on Facebook

Well, one of a million ways. Third panel:

I’ll give you the answer directly: She made a negative statement. To agree, his response should also be negative. He should have said “Me neither.”

The “can’t wait” hyperbole is another issue. Since she has to wait, she should have said that she could hardly wait.

Of course the humor here is all the mistakes. Do you make any of these? heh. If you do, you won’t notice them.

Can you think of a couple more mistakes he could have included? Feel free to list them in the comments.