A Bad Grammar Pun

I almost feel ashamed for posting this…

You know about the Oxford comma, right? (You should use it.)

PS—I ran into an on-topic comic…

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The last post was about a comic with a grammar lesson. Today’s post is about a person in a comic who’s a grammarian.

I’m not sure what the punch line has to do with anything, but the family are responding correctly to the grammar corrections, even though the curmudgeon should not be correcting them. Unless they ask.

I don’t often run into comics that are actual deliberate grammar lessons, so I like to post them whenever I see one:

I’ve posted a lesson on this topic in the past, but it’s worth repeating.

I preach against needless repetition in writing, called redundancy. You can find some of my other redundancy posts using the search box in the upper right corner. Here’s another. I think the speaker had a psychological reason for using it; maybe that’s okay. For speaking, anyway.

“The Greenland canyon we only know about through radar that can see through three kilometers of solid ice.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/greenland-ancient-grand-canyon

Ice is always solid, so “solid” is unnecessary (meaning redundant). In fact, in writing, I think the sentence has a little more punch if you leave the “solid” out. What do you think?

Almost forgot. Here’s a picture:

I’ve mentioned in the past that the correct place for the word “only” is right before the word it modifies, not at the beginning of the whole clause.

So perhaps this curse is worse for the employer than for the employee:

What? Can’t do anything at work but poop? That’s what she’s saying.

Watch what you’re saying when you use “only.”