An editor's nightmare-the email grammar stickler

USA Today columnist Craig Wilson writes about the emails and letters he receives daily regarding grammar errors. He adds humor to the subject by speaking about one woman in particular who seems obsessed with finding and calling out these errors. Here is just a small section from the article.


From the article...

I had a reader who was on such a roll this month, e-mailing me her list of grammar complaints. These weren't so much violations made by me, just what irritates her most.

She began with her husband. His favorite word is "irregardless." She says she has told him repeatedly it is not a word, but he pays her no mind.

He told her it was in the dictionary — it is — and to leave him alone. What she can't convince him of is that the dictionary's definition of irregardless is "regardless."

She then moved on to the misuse of contractions.

What sent her right around the bend recently was a shirt Paris Hilton was wearing to some function that people such as Paris Hilton attend. It read "Thats hot" on the front and "Your not" on the back.

Somewhere Webster is spinning in his grave, she wrote. I suspect she might be right, although Webster never struck me as a spinner type.

What really impressed me, though, was her confession that she sits in church and picks out the mistakes in the Sunday bulletin. She knows this is bad. She told me so.

I replied that I doubted the good Lord would strike her down for editing in church, just as long as she still listened to the sermon.