I'm seeing a pervasive trend that has been concerning me, and I can no longer sit back silently while so many of my friends, even those whose oratorical or grammatical prowess I respect, fall victim to yet another degrading social trend: dropping the "of" from "a couple of".
Stop it. Stop it now. Put that "of" back in, for goodness' sake. Do it for the children in future generations who, if nothing is done, will have yet another nonsensical grammatical glitch to deteriorate the clarity of linguistic structure.
If we continue to ignore this error, who knows where we'll be in a couple generations?
...if you didn't pause and say, "Hey!" while reading that last line, please go back and read this entire post over and over until you do.
That is all.
See Common Errors in English for more slaps upside the prosaic head.
6 comments:
Sometimes I wonder: who is a bigger grammar nerd- you or I?
Alas, "couple of" is just one more victim in the cult of laziness our culture has developed. Why waste a fraction of a second adding a preposition just because it makes sense? P-shaw... but we know better, don't we? :)
Oh Great and Wise Jota,
A-freakin-men!
I may well be as guilty as the next, but am always up for the salvation of worthy thoughts and grammatical expressions despite my unworthiness. Way to keep us in line!
Sadly enough, they don't really teach any substantial amount of grammar in grade school anymore. It was bad enough that my AP English teacher had us do an entire unit of grammatical review. Your grammar peeves are so funny to me- I have exactly one friend who knows anything about grammar besides you. Were you this into grammar before you became bilingual?
Since I don't have any grammar nerdiness to contribute, I offer this: http://kazookah.googlepages.com/goingnucular
Like, there are a couple other, like, major grammar peeves . . .
K - It's you. And yes, yes we do.
Otonos - Just doing my civic duty.
Brittany - Long before.
BLJ - Yeah, I figure I'll take it one peeve at a time. But I was SO tempted to reiterate my disdain for the misplacement of "just".
We just got back from a week-long vacation to Idaho and Utah...I have to throw away my mental grammar dictionary during such trips or I go crazy! "We were," people, not "We was." "They came by yesterday," not "They come by yesterday." And that doesn't even touch the fact that "feel" and "fell" are pronounced two different ways! Yes, I feel your pain.
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