This Embarrasses You and I*

This Embarrasses You and I*

By Donal on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 9:37am |

When Caren Berg told colleagues at a recent staff meeting, "There's new people you should meet," her boss Don Silver broke in, says Ms. Berg, a senior vice president at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., marketing and crisis-communications company.

"I cringe every time I hear" people misuse "is" for "are," Mr. Silver says. The company's chief operations officer, Mr. Silver also hammers interns to stop peppering sentences with "like." For years, he imposed a 25-cent fine on new hires for each offense. "I am losing the battle," he says.

Managers are fighting an epidemic of grammar gaffes in the workplace. Many of them attribute slipping skills to the informality of email, texting and Twitter where slang and shortcuts are common. Such looseness with language can create bad impressions with clients, ruin marketing materials and cause communications errors, many managers say.

There's no easy fix.

URL:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303410404577466662919275448.html

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I dnt gt lk hs prblm u no.

by cmaukonen on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 12:24pm

He's not losing the battle, the language is evolving. ;-)

If this guy was in advertising in the 50's he would be the doo-fus insisting that the slogan, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should" was grammatically incorrect, which, of course, is true, but his slavish devotion to proper form would have cost his agency the Winston account.

(This slavish devotion to form idea, needless to say, does not apply to writing haikus, where slavish devotion to form is all part of the fun, imho. )

by MrSmith1 on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 2:25pm

"What do you want, good grammar or good taste?"

by Donal on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 3:23pm

by artappraiser on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 4:11pm

This is something up with which I will not put.

by EmmaZahn on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 4:31pm

To approve of the grammar you appear not. Yes, hmmm.

by cmaukonen on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 5:47pm

My grammar is right. It just sounds wrong.

Google it. I learned it from something I read about or by Churchill although not sure if he originated it.

by EmmaZahn on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 8:16pm

None of you's is getting any cheezeburgs on account of yer being smarty pantses.

by wabby on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 8:14pm

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