Tuesday, January 29, 2008

the grammar monster surges forth from within!

as my loving wife will gladly tell you, i am annoyingly fixated on proper grammar and spelling (though not so much on punctuation and capitalization in informal writings, as this blog will no doubt validate)

where i got this fixation i'm not quite sure; in my early years the deed/reward system was most lucrative in the field of arithmetic, where those who won blackboard math races (to see who could finish a math problem the fastest) were lavished with candy bars as the spoils of victory. not those pathetic fun-size candy bars; the REAL kind, full-size.

maybe it's just a small piece of personality derived from my overall desire for accuracy in the world, who knows

point is i can find myself standing at a coworker's desk as we work on an issue and as she types an email to parties related to the matter, i scan her monitor and see that one of her email folders is labeled

"Ethanol Bill of Ladings"

and the grammar monster inside me makes silent note that the folder should be properly labeled

"Ethanol Bills of Lading"

but i control the grammar monster, he does not control me; and so i am not seen to involuntarily grab the keyboard away from the user and make the change but instead leave it labeled as is , of my own free will, and continue to harbor my terrible, technically-correct-but-eye-roll-inducing-to-those-less-emotionally-invested curse.

2 comments:

Steven said...

Well perhaps she meant that there was a single bill with multiple ladings. Surely she meant that, right?

The Social Bobcat said...

in the world of vessel shipments, there is but one bill of lading presented at load! if a vessel loaded multiple times or at different locations, there would be a separate bill of lading at each occurrence! do my exclamation points not show that i am serious?!?!!!