Addicted to Blog

I live near Armwood High School, so I drive past it every morning on my way to USF. It seems they have changed their sign since Thursday:

Grimly amusing that a school, of all places, would have a sign much in need of correction. [Upon looking later, I see that they have been given a grade of “C” on this site].

I have never understood the confusion between plurals and possessives. People are just making more work for themselves. How could someone think “Lemon’s - 4/$1″ looks right? What is the lemon claiming ownership of? Its yellow color? Its pungent aroma? Its propensity to be sold cheaply in Winn Dixie*?

If you were actually writing about those last three, then yes, it’s demanded of you to use the apostrophe.

Again, it’s a sign of a lazy mind, because giving it a second thought would tell you it doesn’t look quite right.

Then again, good grammar usage is in a state of decline. It’s evident that it is not taught as frequently as it should be. I remember working through Reed-Kellogg diagrams in middle school; I hated them, because I thought they were just a waste of paper. Complex sentences were a mess, lines sticking out all over the place. Today, I only recall how to diagram the subject, verb, direct object, and prepositional phrases.

At my previous school (Ramapo College, if you’ve ever heard of it), I took a course entitled “Grammar Theory and Pedagogy.” Seriously considering teaching, I signed up for the course, hoping it would shed some light on effectively teaching grammar.

Imagine my abject disappointment when I discovered that the course centered on the RULES of grammar! Disappointment slowly gave way to delight, however, when I realized how easy the course would be.

And it was. For me. As for the rest, well . . .

Our book took a chapter for each part of speech, wherein it explained, gave examples, and plenty of practice items. Often, we would sit in a circle and go through these tiems, one by one:

Identify the direct object in the sentence: Jimmy threw the ball.

Simple. Sentence. Half of the class (and there were about 30 students) struggled with this. “Um . . . uh . . . Jimmy?”

I would usually drift off during this; if I hadn’t, I might have beaten them bloody with the text.

The scariest part of all was the fact that most of those kids wanted to be teachers. They’ll just be perpetuating the cycle.

Bad grammar, forever and ever, world without end, amen.

*Amusing footnote: I almost wrote A&P here. Guess you can’t take all the Jersey outta me.