For Whom The Bell Tolls...

[ljplicease]

The fact that I just said "whom" there reminds me. I was looking for grammar jokes on-line today, because I had found someone's profile last night which had a grammar error. Now usually I don't really care about grammar or spelling errors. I try to avoid them with the spell/grammar checker, but if someone mistypes I usually don't think twice about it. This person bitches about people using poor spelling after incorrectly using "your" where she meant "you're" or "you are." So I politely said that what she was saying would be more effective if it um... were spelled right. She wrote me back and rudely told me that it was a joke. I guess that must be one of those nifty post-modern jokes which rely on not being funny to convey its point. So I wrote back and said "funny joke. makes you look ignorant." I deleted her response to that without reading it, because really, I had already wasted too much of my life on this little episode. But I did spend some time searching the Internet for grammar jokes. I thought if I found some funny ones then I might send them to her. I actually had something in mind... a segment from A Prairie Home Companion which I had found quite amusing. I couldn't find the segment from the show that I had in mind, which is a pity I suppose, but probably just as well. One of the other things I found was a list of "jokes" on Dr. Grammar's web site... none of which were funny at all. Maybe I'm just not able to get the whole Grammar Joke genre or something. Anyway one of the things there was on when to use "whom" and when to use "who". I'm never quite sure if I'm using the right one... but after reading what it said I think I pretty much always choose the right one.