Try and use good grammar

Alas! Today is Wednesday, and tomorrow I have my first (and second to last) final exam! This one is for my medieval romance class, which thus far has been all fun and games, by which I mean that all of the readings have been more or less enjoyable and the lectures have been nothing but entertaining (and that wasn't sarcastic). Now, however, I will be asked to identify twenty passages, saying where they're from, when they're from, what language they're in, what the context of the passage is within the book, and whether the author was a cat or dog person. (That last one was a joke... all of them were dog people). Luckily we get a review packet with 60 passages (the 20 will be chosen from these), and we only have about 7 books. But a difficult task nonetheless.

I'm not too worried about it though, I've already done a good two hours worth of studying. I'm more worried about all of my papers. And Christmas. But mainly my papers.

The other day, I discovered came across something rather interesting. I learned that the word "acronym" does not cover as much as I had though. There is another word, "initialism," which is what I had thought acronyms were. Acronyms are abbreviation types thingies where you are supposed to pronounce the name. For instance, NATO or CAT (Condescending A-Hole Terrestrial). Initialisms, on the other hand, include all acronyms, but also those things that you are not meant to pronounce, such as BBC or CCCLLLCTAA (Center for the Containment of Celebrities who have Lucrative, Lovely, Lives but who Cheat and Throw it All Away (Current Population: Tiger Woods)).

This is one of those little tidbits of information I will always need to correct people on now, something I never get tired of doing.

There are some things in
Our language that are just plain
Wrong. Work to right them.


I'm talking about all of those little grammatical errors, but not like "you're" and "your." I'm referencing the errors that have become so commonplace in our society that even some of the most avid grammar police don't think about them. My prime example of this is "try and." The sentence is "try to." To "try and" implies that you succeed, which defeats the purpose of the word "try" which has a sense of uncertainty. For instance, if you say "I'm gonna try and kill him tonight" it means that you are going to kill him tonight. And if you are going to kill him, why don't you just say that? You mean to say "I'm going to try to," which suggests that there is actually a chance of failure (even though you probably thought it all out and have that elaborate trap set up under his mattress and everything).

There are other little errors such as "who" vs "whom," but I shall not go into further rambling regarding this.