Call me persnickety, but there are some things I’ve seen—a lot—in books that, as the title says, don’t make sense to me, or are just plain wrong.
One of the most glaring things that doesn’t make sense is where people land when they do a pratt fall, or where they drop things or where they put things: the ground. Now, if these clumsy characters are in the garden, it’s okay to fall onto the ground. But seriously, unless a character lives in what the pioneers called a “soddy,” a house made of blocks of sod, they fall on the floor, not the ground. Maybe I’m living a sheltered life, but I don’t know anyone who has dirt floors.
Full disclosure, just so you know how seriously I take this: When my son Ben had to move his Science Fiction and Fantasy bookstore, Bakka-Phoenix Books, into new quarters quickly, he found a property for lease that was suitable but needed work. It had a dirt floor in the basement. In the middle of a world-class city! But that wasn’t the only thing that was remarkable about the store. What struck me whenever I ventured into the basement—I was designated painter of wooden display cubes—was that there was nothing alive in the basement. No flies, no spiders, no mice. Just a dirt floor, walls shaggy with dust drapes, and a live wire hanging on one wall that sparked when disturbed.
We dubbed the basement The Hellmouth.
But when characters live in houses and condos and apartments, they have wood or tile or carpeted floors. Not dirt or blacktop or any other type of ground. They have floors. Why this has become an accepted standard of fictional domiciles, I don’t know. Do readers notice this anomaly? Do they care? I don’t know. But I care!
Come on, authors! It’s a floor. It’s even shorter to type than ground.
Then there are the grammatical bloopers that drive me nuts. The worst one is the misuse of “I”—getting technical here—as an objective pronoun. Here’s an example: “Dad gave the puzzle pieces to Jim and I.” No, he did not. Dad gave the puzzle pieces to Jim and me. Not sure? There’s an easy test: “Dad gave the puzzle pieces to I” is just wrong, wrong, wrong. So… if to, at, with, without, before, on, in, etc., comes before a person and the speaker, the correct word for the speaker is “me.” (Or “us,” or “them,” depending on how many people are the object of the verb.)
I think me got a bad rep from teachers who corrected kids for saying “It’s me.” And yeah, really, what kid is going to say, “It’s I”? Correct but it sounds stilted and weird.
And then there’s the equally wrong blunder of “Me and Jim took the puzzle pieces.” Me can’t be the subject of a sentence because it’s the object of a verb; it’s not a noun.
But, yes, you’re right, too many school systems have stopped including grammar in their curricula. I don’t know why. Is it because the teachers don’t have a grasp of English grammar? (Probably not.) Or is it because the school powers-that-be are afraid of confusing children’s tender little brains? The thing is, in many endeavors, grammar counts. Just ask someone who codes computer software, which has its own grammar rules. Punctuation counts, too. The period at the end of a sentence has become a dot. Sure, it takes less time to say, but it’s had a very long, successful, run as a period. And while it’s easier to say, “dot com” than “period com,” what does one call a comma? A squiggle?
Another pet peeve is the all too ubiquitous “try and…” It’s try to… A person doesn’t try and do something, because those are two different actions, separated by the and. Here’s a simple test for this: “I’m going to try and explain why this is wrong,” compared to “I’m going to try to explain why this is right.” Contrary to what Yoda claimed, there is trying, and there is doing, but they shouldn’t be separated by “and.” And that’s because “to do” is the infinitive form of the verb, while “and do” isn’t. (There’s that grammar thing again, the study of which is disappearing.)
Yes, this is a losing battle. It’s permeated speech as well as the written word, but while in speech we don’t have a backspace or delete key, writers do have those literally at their fingertips. Let’s all try to respect our words, shall we?
Yeah, no.
Speaking of infinitives and compound verbs, so many of them get split. Grammatical carnage left and write. Examples? Sure. “Jim is going to simply go about his business and ignore his error.” That should be “Jim simply is going to go about his business and will get a gold star for good grammar.” Another example? “Dad told Jim to quickly grab a knife.” (Don’t ask me why; ask Dad.) It should be “Dad told Jim to grab a knife quickly.” Or, “Dad told Jim quickly to grab a knife.” (I still don’t know why. Use your imagination.)
Okay, I feel better now.
Your mileage may vary.
© Kate Freiman 2025