The 20 Most Controversial Rules in the Grammar World
http://www.onlinecollege.org/the-20-most-controversial-rules-in-the-grammar-world
“Like anything else involving stringent rules and regulations, grammar harbors a hefty share of obsessive fanboys and fangirls who enjoy debating its ins, outs, and other various quirks. So of course controversies break out in academia, the media, and even intimate conversations between friends. Here are a few of the ones that churn stomachs and angry up the blood, in no particular order.”
-
The Oxford Comma
-
The pronunciation of “controversial”
-
Double negatives
-
“Irregardless”
-
Ending sentences with prepositions
-
“Hanged” vs. “Hung”
-
Like as a conjunction
-
“Good” vs. “Well”
-
Text/Internet speak
-
Starting sentences with “however”
-
Starting sentences with “but” or “and”
-
Gender-neutral pronouns
-
Split infinitives
-
Passive voice
-
Punctuation inside quotation marks
-
Possessive apostrophes on words that end in ‘s’
-
“E-mail” vs. “email”
-
Universal grammar rules
-
The fact that there are different kinds of dashes
-
“Who” vs. “Whom”
The Oxford Comma For Evah!
Stephen
2 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
Love this list, but it doesn’t include the one issue that vexes me the most. What’s the best way to create a possessive from a noun that already ends with a double-s. For instance, the object that belongs to the whole class… is it the class’s ? Class’ ? Or does “class” just become a a non-possessive adjective, like “class clown?”
This example illustrates the utility of the Oxford comma:
http://thegloss.com/beauty/why-the-oxford-comma-is-something-you-should-care-about-392/