You know your a grammar snob when…

Ok, first off, let’s get something straight — I’m NOT.  A grammar snob, I mean.  I grew up in the land where “ain’t got no”s and “damned if I do”s flowed like moonshine.  The dialect colored a landscape that wasn’t deemed exciting enough to warrant mention in big city papers.  It was part of our trademark, no less than the blue grass and Ale-8-One.  In fact, I think a lot of otherwise talented narrative writers never make the leap to the printed page, because they spend too much time and lose too much voice trying to force their words to conform to the “rules.”

Plus, there is absolutely no circumstance (unless you’re being paid for it), where you can publicly correct someone’s grammar and not look like an absolute jerk.  I believe that anyone who does this belongs in that special layer of hell reserved for meter maids and people who hassle waiters. 

But, every once in awhile, a bad-grammar trend emerges that is so pervasive and so annoying that it begins to wear (even) on me.  I hear it once, and it’s a single drip from a leaky faucet.  But then it keeps going.   And going, until it’s a relentless deluge of pellets, zinging unevenly into an alumninum sink.  In a hotel room.  Miles from home, where there’s no escape.  And then, even I can’t forgive it. 

A couple of weeks ago, the leak became a deluge when I found myself stuck in traffic behind a big pick-up truck.  The rear window had an elaborate decorative paint job.  It was very meticulously done, and I’m sure it was expensive.  It bore a large number “4″ and various other Dale Earnhardt symbols, along with this phrase, in careful script:  “HERO’S NEVER DIE.”         

Readers, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this a new thing?  I don’t remember, growing up, my English teachers having to give exessive numbers of lessons on use of the apostrophe to indicate possession.  In the dreaded universe of grammar lessons, wasn’t this one of the easy ones?  Right up there with using an “s” to make something plural?  (Though evidently, this is a problem too.)  I mean, it’s not as if America is having difficulty with quotes within quotes within quotes, or how to use that pesky dash. 

I think we’ve regressed.  I think our once-decent grammar skill’s is dying.

This morning, I discovered The Grammar Vandal, wherein the author has dedicated her time to finding the most egregious examples of language done gone bad.  And she’s not a Grammar Snob, either.  From what I can tell, the offender has to be pretty bad to make the cut.  Today’s example, a bumper stick on Facebook that proclaims “You know your a senior when the Sparknotes are to long!!!”

Sic, sic, sic.           

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