For all the grammar lovers....

[RadyLady]

I cringe every time I hear my son (and wife) say "Who is it from?"
Am I the ony one in the world to use "whom?

Correctly spoken it would be: "From whom is it?"

Now that does sound odd to my ears. Often I would say, "from whom?"

Whom is not as uncommon as it appears to be.

 

[RadyLady]

Grammer lovars......

hee hee hee....been wanting to write that all day but the slowness of the Boneyard is so frustrating that I had to close the page for a while...

Was there an upgrade? My page appears to have changed.

 

[Zorro]

The great linguist, Ted Higgs, said in one of his books that "the purpose of grammar is not to make onself understood, but to avoid being misunderstood". Sounds sensible to me. If whatever you say or write conveys your meaning unambiguously, then your grammar is correct enough and rules be hanged. imho, of course. As far as who-whom is concerned, I think it has come to the point where it is very difficult to use "whom" in informal speech or writing without sounding somewhat stilted and precious. RadyLady's "from whom" may be an exception that proves the rule, as "from who" would still sound odd.

 

[Zorro]

My most hated: "I feel badly" unless the person means his/her fingers are numb.

In spite of my general lack of respect for prescriptionism, I have to admit that I share your feeling about this one, which about 90% of BY posters seem to commit. I also have a totally illogical negative reaction to the use of "less" rather than "fewer" to describe quantifiable variables, such as games won and lost, even though "less" conveys the meaning unambiguously. Well, we all have our quirks.

 

[Tidepool]

A lot of contributors to this thread are going to enjoy this, from -- of all people -- Weird Al Yankovic.