Grammar Gripe

[HayleyWriter]

Picture me laughing! Have a great night.

Hayley

[JKALLEN]

Perhaps not so much an issue of grammar, but I cringe every time I hear a word perverted on TV...like my most recent pet peeve from a Taco Bell commercial advertising some fast food item with 'MELTY' Cheese! I think they say something like, "Oooey, gooey, melty cheese."

Ugh. Like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Jenn

[Celeste Stewart]

I hated the Budweiser "Wazzzzuppp" campaign. Also disliked the craze of using numbers in place of letters as in "NUM3ERS" though in this case it almost makes sense (not quite, but almost).

[eek]

You are not alone:
http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/me-and-my-car-a


I was about to say that sometimes I like an ad that evokes a feeling, even if it twists the language. I see ads/commercials/slogans in nearly the same category as poetry or song. But I couldn't think of any grammatically-incorrect successful slogans. Words created for catchy phrasing, like "melty," almost achieve it, but that one didn't quite work for me. But I can understand why advertisers would go for a catchy phrase if it is truly memorable.

I also see some fun article ideas here: how advertising influences language, or don't sacrifice grammar for catchy titles. (no poetic license for us!)

Emma

[BarryDavidson]

Don't get me started on colloquialisms or "clichés" as a certain group of Americans call them, even though there is a difference in most cases.

Most people would agree with the statement that anything Microsoft puts out is an accident waiting to happen. The unfortunate part is that even though it's true, most editors and critics will shoot down the whole piece because "accident waiting to happen" is considered a cliché. I've been given bad reviews because people felt that one of my lines was too "cliché-like" for their tastes.

I can speak several different Southern dialects, and can wing several foreign ones. The only problem with speaking in the foreign accents is that I don't know the colloquialisms. As for "Southern" accents (referring to states south of the Mason Dixon line in the United States), many people don't realize that there are more than one. It's like comparing a Scottish to an Irish accent. While it may sound the same to foreigners, I'd never be dumb enough to compare the two in the company of either.

Southern Aristocrat (spoken mainly in parts of Georgia and Alabama) will often transform one syllable words into two, such as the word head. Southern "trailer-park" doesn't quite break head into two syllables, but does draw out the he as hey.

I haven't had enough coffee yet, and I feel that I'm not being funny in any way. Here's a laugh for ya'll. http://www.thenextbigwriter.com/tnbw_pu ... liche.html