I recently watched “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Word Crimes video, which is a spoof of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines.
It’s damn hilarious. Do yourself a favour and watch it now:
One of my favourite bits:
And I thought that you’d gotten it through your skull
What’s figurative and what’s literal
Oh but, just now, you said
You literally couldn’t get out of bed
That really makes me want to literally
Smack a crowbar upside your stupid head
And this:
Say you got an “I”,”T”
Followed by apostrophe, “s”
Now what does that mean?
You would not use “it’s” in this case
As a possessive
It’s a contraction
What’s a contraction?
Well, it’s the shortening of a word, or a group of words
By the omission of a sound or letter
He goes on to sing about how you shouldn’t use quotation marks for emphasis, and how you should know the difference between irony and coincidence.
Love it.
Anyway, it got me thinking about my own word crimes.
Even though I consider myself quite apt at spelling and grammar, there are still a few words that screw me up. I’m writing this post to hopefully help myself remember this stuff!
Here we go:
Rythm..wait or is it rhythym? Arrggh. Let me try one more time…rhythm. Got it!
I used to always spell receive as ‘recieve’. Damn i’s and e’s! One way I’ve managed to remember this is to think of the ‘c’ being in an ‘e’ sandwich! Same with ‘receipt’.
I never knew how to spell ‘segue’ properly. I always thought it was ‘Segway’, but it turns out ‘Segway’ is a brand name of those silly two-wheeler transportation things. Haha.
Yaght. No. Yacht. YESSS. Such ridiculous spelling (as she types in ‘rediculous’. Turns out I’m not as good a speller as I thought…)
Up until recently, I never knew there was such thing as using a double hyphen — like that. I always used a single hyphen – like this – until my friend Erin corrected me. I learned the double hyphen is used in place of an ’em’ dash, which is a slightly longer dash that Word auto converts your double hyphen to. A single hyphen (or ‘en’ dash) is used when connecting two item for example:
Delivery will take 2-4 working days
The Oscar-winning actor
The halftime score was 3-1
And while we’re here, here are some things I hear all the time and I can’t stand:
Using “done” when you really mean “did”. For example:
I done that yesterday
Writing “would of” instead of “would have”
Using “forget” incorrectly. For example:
What’s the name of that band? I forget what they’re called
…when it should be: I’ve forgotten what they’re called
Anyway, I could go on, but it’s Friday night so I’m just gonna (sorry, going to) hit publish.
C ya tomoz! 😉 😛 😀
