Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The death of the adverb

It seems that no matter what the media, I daily read or hear people who have no idea what an adverb is or how to use it. I really should start keeping track of the numerous examples I see of this on the internet. I follow local sports somewhat closely, and sports fans, writers and talk show hosts seem to be the worst offenders. Surprisingly, many of these folks have college degrees or at least some college under their belts.

Day after day, I read or hear something like these:
  • The receiver ran the route perfect!
  • He gets down the field quick.
  • Drive safe.
  • He did that nice.
How can they not possibly know that those adverbs should be "perfectly," "quickly," "safely," and "nicely"? Any middle schooler has learned this stuff.

Similarly, people do not seem to know when to correctly use "good" instead of "well" and vice versa. "I like your picture. You did real good." No, he or she did real well.

I have no idea why I'm ranting about this. But the slow destruction of the English language is driving me to my grave quick...err I mean quickly.

1 comment:

Kristie Wyler said...

How about using "me" instead of "I" and quotation marks inside of periods?