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OBSERVATIONS
March 11, 2021 |
 |
 Wingate Lassiter |
Abuses of grammar and rules
of the road are driving me crazy
Pardon me while I pontificate about a pair of Personal Pet Peeves involving a couple of V's: Verbal and Vehicular abuse.
First the verbal. They're common violations of the "old school" English grammar drilled into me during my days in elementary school more than half a century ago.
No. 1 is the use of "different than" in place of "different from." I was taught that it's "more than" and "different from," and it still seems more logical when you pair "different from" as in "moving away" with "closer to" as in "moving toward."
No. 2 on my list is another abomination that involves the word "from" --- when writers use a hyphen as a substitute for the word "to" as in "He played basketball in college from 1965-69." In my grammar book, it ought to be "from 1965 to 1969." Or perhaps "he played in 1965-69." The hyphen along with "from" and "to" is better used when you write things like: "She taught school here from 2009-2010 to 2019-2020," referring to academic years that overlap the first of January.
Now to the vehicular abuse:
Why has it become so "cool" to drive around town without bothering to use those standard-issue turn signals? It's not only illegal; it's also inconsiderate of your fellow motorists (and pedestrians and cyclists), and it's downright dangerous.
What especially galls me is when law-enforcement officers set the bad example with their turning without signaling. "Everyone else is driving that way; why not me?" seems to be the prevailing attitude.
Coupled with rampant disregard for posted speed limits, refusing to flip the turn-signal switch tells me something about the state of mind of the present-day populace. Where's our "sense of community" when we behave as if we're in a bubble of our own?
And I saw plenty of evidence for all that long before the pandemic put us in isolation.
Sure signs that Spring will be here shortly
Daffodils breaking out in
yards like this one on Rosewood Drive (above)
and flowering cherries (I'm guessing) in front of the
First Missionary Baptist Church on North Fourth Street
(below) tell us that Spring is near. According
to the calendar, its official arrival is just a week
away --- on Saturday, March 20.
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