February 25, 2010

I do

So much fun from the grammar world this week...

Like there's this article on "crash blossoms" in which missing punctuation in newspaper headlines cause a bit of misunderstanding - "McDonald’s Fries the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers"..."Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim"...“Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge”..."Gator Attacks Puzzle Experts"...
The next list is one of which I am admittedly a little skeptical, it's a list of grammatical curiosities - pluralities of various animal types.  There's the standard and a little odd murder of crows, but there's a number of other oddities in the canonical list: bed of clams, bloat of hippos, dazzle of zebras.  It'd certainly be awfully easy for a web savvy so and so to put together such a list without any sort of citation.  I love the fascinating trivia of language.

For example, there's the Latin derivations for various animal types.  Pretty much everybody's down on feline and canine - that's simple as simple can be.  Most of us know bovine for cows.  A few folks might make out ursine for bears.  But acrine for something dealing with frogs?  Larine for seagull-related discussions?

Then there's a list of humorous grammar rules - such as remembering that the passive voice is to be ignoredeven IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed; and you'll look poorly if you misuse adverbs.

And, finally, there's the outstanding quality of the Oxford comma.

Careful about the video, though, there's a chili pepper word about four words in - it's repeated a couple more times.

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