So, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m one of those people. There’s all sorts of names for it… some nice, some not so nice.
Once I’m told that a certain way is right, it’s hard for me to put up with things being done the wrong way. I worked at a men’s clothing store over one summer and during several Christmas holidays. There I learned all sorts of “right” things, like which way clothes should face on a hanger, the fact that you never button a suit coat or sports coat when it’s hanging, etc. Now those things bug me if they’re done differently.
Where people like me really get annoying is with grammar and spelling. For us, the confusion of words like “you’re” and “your” should be punishable by death. The use of mixed verbs like “we had went” makes our skin crawl. There are even some “correct” forms that I won’t use because they sound so strange: “If I were he, I would go.” But I have to think them in my head, even if I rarely if ever use the word “whom.”
Fortunately, my wife is much the same way, at least as far as grammar and spelling are concerned. She worked for a while as a proofreader, which let her put this tendency to good use. (And that’s pretty amazing since she was proofreading in her second language, not her native tongue) She posted a photo on her Facebook yesterday, taken from grammarly.com. It captures the essence of romance for the grammar obsessed:
When someone says, ” I would like to thank Frank for ________” , I want to shout, ” WHAT IS RESTRAINING YOU?”
Love it, love it, love it!!!! I KNEW we had more in common than love for the LORD!
Most of us are the same, at least in regard to some things, but your post reminded me of my senior English teacher’s favorite story about correct grammer.
A British lady kept writing to Winston Churchill complaining about his tendancy to end sentences in a preposition. He replied saying that he was sorry he had offended her by his less than correct grammer, then adding, “Madam, you are the type of person up with which I have to put ;-)