On Yahoo! (and AOL), caught this headline, President LBJ’s youngest daughter hospitalized. Problem is, President Johnson didn’t have a youngest daughter. The Texas Democrat only had two children, both girls, so, they’re referencing a non-existent human being. You don’t use the superlative when there are only two to compare. Guess no one at the AP had Miss Hickman teach them grammar.
We at GayPatriot wish a speedy recovery to the younger daughter of the 36th president of the United States.
*And maybe not even to their writers.
haha.. Grammar check your headline
What’s sad is, I didn’t catch it either, and I was an English tutor.
The first sentence is missing the word ‘I’ preceding ‘caught’. The sentence “Guess, no one at the AP had Miss Hickman teach them grammar.’ has a superfluous comma. And of course, the missing ‘like’ in the headline.
Thanks, guy. Teaches me not to post in haste. 🙂
The “grammatical error” you accuse AP of making is a myth. There is no such grammatical error. Check out Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.
Wrong. Using the superlative for one element of a pair isn’t incorrect. Some authorities are silent on it, and some say it is incorrect, but some accept it. By the standards of quasi-political grammar nitpicking, that’s a public flaming fail, aside from the monk-immolation-level fail that is your own hash of a post.
Greatest fail, though, is in your attitude, which is quite typical of your deluded political perspective. Since we can thank Miss Hickman for your perspicacity in grammar and mechanics, and your smooth polish and sharp eye in revision, we should also hold her accountable where the results were not so hot.
Clearly, Miss Hickman should have identified and cauterized that impulse to hold yourself superior to others. She should have taught you a few basic research skills, though of course she could not have anticipated how easy such research would be (and how easy hypocrite-scathing would be as well) once the publishing industry had collapsed far enough to permit you a public forum. She was clearly defeated in any attempt to teach you a sense of writerly self-awareness. I would guess her daily routine of sherry-sipping left her unequipped to tackle your tacky habit of judgement over a single untested observation. That impulse is normal in children between the ages of 5 and 9, so Miss Hickman would have been well versed; perhaps you were an extreme case.
Also, since I imagine you hearken forlornly back to the days of proper religious education in the schools, Miss Hickman forgot to instruct you properly in the old aphorism–let him who is without sin throw the first stone, but like a girl so that it goes straight up in the air and lands on he (the without sin one)’s head. And people who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up and recognize that they are not half as smart as they think they are.
ice9, way way smarter than you
Dan lectured me about the same usage at a Starbucks once.
ice9, please defend yourself with actual reference to things I’ve said.
Your need to level personal attacks is most amusing; if I were you, I might examine why you feel compelled to reply in such a nasty fashion.
But, thanks for helping making my point about the narrowness of so many on the left. To that end, your bile is greatly appreciated.
“To that end, your bile is greatly appreciated.”
LMAO
“if I were you, I might examine why you feel compelled to reply in such a nasty fashion”
If I were you, I would ponder whether I should continue to post such inept pedantry.
This one’s in the gray-zone I fear, though I’d lean towards it being an incorrect usage. But you would think that the AP or the NYT editors would know the difference between “fount” and “font” before using in a bold-face headline on Page-1 of America’s paper of record last week.
Proofreading standards are definitely slipping…in spite of the hundreds of thousands of “English” and “Communication”-majors that America’s Liberal Arts colleges and universities mindlessly hurn-out each year….aparently emphasis on “mindless”.
Dan thinks he knows better than Jane Austen. Here the the beginning of ‘Emma’:
“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
“She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father…”
“Ice9, please defend yourself…”.
Ice9 need not defend himself; he’s the attacker.
Plus, that wasn’t bile. You don’t know from bile. That was piling on a dumbass who can’t write the de rigeur ‘grammar-nitpick’ attack column without tripling the errors he is supposedly watchdogging, and who can’t write a grammar-nitpick attack on an actual error, and who evokes his good-ol’ teacher before he checks to see whether she is still with us.
I am very much alive, young man. It’s time for you to grow up.
Leslie Hickman
PS: more bad work. Bile is violent, angry, vituperative. This was a cool, masterful demolition of a cocky twit.
LH