I have a confession to make. I am a grammar bitch. I have a lot of pet peeves, but the fastest way to annoy me is to abuse the English language (or to ask an incredibly stupid question).

In my capacity as a writer and editor, I have developed a comprehensive command of the English language, and it annoys me that other people who use the language at least as often as I do haven't taken the time to do that as well.

In one of its earliest incarnations, this website had an entire page devoted to proper use of the ellipsis points (...), which serves only to prove that my obsession with proper grammar is not a new thing. Of course, in one of its earliest incarnations, this website had an entire page devoted to the wonder that is bacon, so maybe there shouldn't be any kind of standard involved in how things used to be around here.

The point I was trying to make is that, four or five years ago, I took for granted that I knew exactly where and when to expect grammatical errors. There were certain people and publications that refused to abide by proper usage rules, and I knew that going in. However, I could trust certain other people and publications to at least run Spell Check before sending something to the printer.

Things have changed. The Internet has revolutionized the way news is reported. From the look of things, it has also recently rendered proofreading obsolete. Spell Check only checks the spelling. It doesn't decide whether the correctly spelled word is the word you meant to use.

I finally gave up pretending that editors even exist anymore at newspapers after a recent check of headlines at the TV Barn Ticker.

Take this story from yesterday's Guardian. When discussing the recent public anti-Sheen movement, the story mentioned Sheen's organizing of a "virtual match" [sic] on Washington. Without having read about the protest last week, I might not have known that they really meant to say "virtual march."

'Match' and 'march' are both words, but only one of them makes sense in the context of the story.

Another aspect of this situation that annoys me is the fact that, nine times out of ten, these are simple errors that could be corrected by proofreading. Yes, run Spell Check. Okay, run Grammar Check. Always, always, always read what you wrote before you send it in. You won't see me petitioning for the return of the rough draft anytime soon, but at least review what you've written so you don't come off sounding like an idiot.

I don't think people realize that they sound dumb, either. When I get an e-mail with glaring punctuation errors, I cringe. I know it's e-mail and I know it's supposed to be less formal, but it comes across as ignorant.

When I proofread a story and come out with more red ink than black, that says something about the education system in this county, this state, this country. It also smacks of laziness. If we are forced to attend school every day for twelve years, we might as well make the best of it and try to learn something. These are basic English skills. We're not diagramming sentences over here, but maybe we should be.

My argument, in a nutshell, is that the world would be a better place if I never had to deal with any of the following things again:

• lack of subject/verb agreement
• sentence fragments
• comma splices
• split infinitives
• dangling participles
• misused ellipses
• misspelled words

I'm probably missing more than a few things, and we all know that Sarah has covered this much more diligently that I have, but if we could fix just those above problems (and if certain people on staff would pull their heads out of their asses and quit multislacking just long enough to string a couple of properly punctuated sentences together), we'd be off to a running start.

And one of these days, I'm going to go stark raving mad outside the Piggly Wiggly and rip down the banner advertising 'Old Fashion [sic] Meats.'

***

Granted, this could be a lot better, but I'm tired. I'm going to a conference this weekend that will require my...something, and we have a week left before spring break, so no one can blame me for being a lazy whore. Perhaps my brain will go on vacation without me once again.