Sanitized, Skunked and Still Wrong

A word that is sanitized ›refers to usage that at one time were verboten but now have become acceptable. In most cases, the formerly “correct” usage now sounds either too formal or just plan weird. Like ›can be skunked, sanitized and still wrong. This ›has not always been the case, but it is now acceptable to use like as a synonym for such as. For example, ›he plays basketball like a professional athlete.

A word that is skunked is when ›certain grammatical constructions should be avoided. The word only falls into this category. ›This adverb has to be placed directly in front of the word it is modifying. For instance, ›America only had only one more metal than Norway. The first only is crossed out because it is wrong.

A word that is still wrong is when ›certain grammatical mistakes are commonly made in spoken but not written English. The sports conditional is an example of this, and it is ›not exclusively found in sports context. The sports conditional is when ›athletes, fans and commentators drawn to phrase would have in considering scenarios that didn't happen. For example, ›[If King would have made that shot, the Bobcats would have won the game.] If King had made the shot, the Bobcats would have won the game. The sentence in brackets is wrong.

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Behrend Poster Errors

This week in my Comm 160 class we had to go around campus and find egregious spelling errors. I did not find a lot of spelling errors, but I did find some errors that angered me. The first error was on a flyer that read " Need a Place to Live!", this one seemed  like an obvious error to me. The flyer should be read as a question, therefore the phrase should end with a question mark

The next flyer I saw was one for Men's Bible Study, and it had a picture of Chuck Norris on it. I'm guessing the author of this flyer was trying to be funny by writing "Chuck Norris didn't join the Air Force, The Air Force joined Chuck Norris". However, this saying has nothing to do with men's bible study, and saying the Air Force joined Chuck Norris is a passive sentence and does not make sense. I think they should leave this phrase out completing because it makes no sense, and the Air Force has nothing to do with men's bible study. If someone really wanted Chuck Norris on the flyer a Chuck Norris approved stamp could have been put on it.

The next poster I saw was for the LGBT community and had a picture from Mean Girls where Santa is handing out candy canes to classmates. The poster said " Four For You", I don't think this was an error, but I had no idea what it meant. The poster was very vague in what it was trying to advertise, and this phrase just made me more confused.

Finally, the last error I found was for a Behrend Musicians. The word that was misspelled was "preform", and it should be perform. Another item I thought that was wrong with the flyer was that organized was or-ganized because it didn't fit on the same line. For that error one should just put the word on the next line because it looked awkward the way it was.

Punctuation

This past week in my Comm 160 class we learned about punctuation. One thing that I took from this lesson was how many times we misuse commas. For example, when listing a series of things your going to do for the day there is no comma before the last item (feed the dog, wash the car and take a shower). Also a rule that a lot of people follow is when reading a sentence and you need to take a breath a comma might need to be placed there. Another rule is always put a comma after introductory words like for instance, however, meanwhile and therefore. After this lesson I started noticing every time a comma is needed, and when other people use a comma when none is needed.