The English Language

For someone who earned his undergraduate degree in English and has received, or is working on receiving, advanced degrees in journalism, I tend to slip-up and make mistakes with cases, create overly long sentences, and make gratuitous use of commas, em and en dashes, and semi-colons in order to create one coherent thought (which is directly tied into slip-up #2).

(Funny, the above sentence is a too-long sentence, but I like it that way.)

(And at least I've got my parentheses right. Right?)

So, while I'm consistently self-abasing, self-aware, and hyper-critical about my hold of the English language (as an aspiring editor, it comes with the territory) I also like reading about errors of language, malapropisms, and the importance of punctuation.

(The recent clamor about the Founding Father's intent when punctuating the 2nd Amendment comes to mind.)

It's a way of granting myself a small shred of smugness, as I know the folly of these errors (but I often make some of them myself). The internet is chock-full of plenty of pages writ up by grammarians and sticklers, and this one is one that looks to be more extensive than the rest.

Exciting stuff, I know. (So I say with a tongue-in-cheek.)