Grammar: It's a Family Thing

Some years ago, one of my adult daughters (all of whom then lived away from Montana) had a date with a young man. After the date, when I asked how it had gone, the response I received was, “He was just too/to/two.” Coming from a family of English majors, people who love English, grammar, and learning, I understood her perfectly. He would not remain long in her life.

One of my father’s treasures was a huge Oxford English Dictionary. This tome was so large and unwieldy it had its own stand. It stood open, in the living room, in pride of place, for instant access should any of us have any questions about a word’s spelling, its possible usage, or its origins.

In my family, and our lives, it is important to know which word to use when, and to punctuate our sentences properly so as to avoid confusion.

‘To’ denotes a direction or a destination. You travel to a place, or head to(wards) a compass point. If you overshoot your mark, you’ve gone too far. That form of ‘too’ is used to mean ‘also’, as well. And ‘two’ is the number.

We are also greatly bothered by those who use the words ‘there’, ‘they’re’, and ‘their’ interchangeably. They are NOT the same. ‘There’ is a direction or destination also. ‘They’re’ is a contraction for ‘they are’. And ‘their’ means it belongs to them. You simply cannot use them incorrectly once you understand the differences. “Their going over they’re with there books,” makes absolutely no sense at all, when written. If you just hear it spoken, you understand that what is meant is, “They’re going over there with their books.”

My family and I are also bothered by people who don’t seem to understand when to use the word ‘lose’ and when to use ‘loose’. When you are going to overindulge with too much food, such as a Thanksgiving feast, it’s nice to have your clothing be loose. If you wanted to lose your clothing, you might possibly be partaking of the passé pastime of streaking, or visiting a nudist colony. You may set your dogs loose. You may lose your keys. Your tooth might be loose before you lose it. I might be losing my sanity.

And speaking of clothing, you wear clothes. These are generally made from cloths (although I did once upon a time have a dress made of silver paper). Cloth is the fabric from which clothes are constructed. That closes that subject.

A lot of people try to sound more cultured by using ‘I’ instead of ‘me’, but when it’s done incorrectly, the effect is the opposite of what was desired. Some years ago Toby Keith had a huge hit with “I Want to Talk About Me” in which he sang “Wanna talk about I” in the refrain. This song was most irritating to me. I had to change the radio station whenever it came over the airwaves.

I will confess that the useages of ‘lay’ and ‘lie’ are not completely clear to me. I know that chickens lay eggs and people lie rather than tell the truth. But we lay the groundwork, we lay the table, and we let sleeping dogs lie. There’s the childhood prayer that begins, “Now I lay me down to sleep … “ and the adage that says, “Now you’ve made your bed, lie in it.” And the reason, I think, that this one confuses me is because my English teacher (way back when) set us up for failure by introducing this subject with the words, “This one is hard.” She let us know that failure was not only possible, but probable. It was a horrible way to try to teach us.

So I won’t lie to you, I try to overlook others’ grammatical errors, but it’s extremely difficult for me. My mind takes note. I do get sLIEghtly upset when people I consider to be reasonably intelligent and educated use the wrong word. But I will now lay this piece upon the desk of the most competent copy editor The Courier currently has (and who happens to be one of my pretty maids), for her to correct.