Reader peeves

JUNE CASAGRANDE

I have some bad news for those of you who justify sloppy writing and

grammar by sighing, “Oh, who cares?”

People care.

And not just uptight control freaks, either. There are lots of

normal, nice people who can’t help but feel bummed or irked when they

see glaring evidence that the language is going down the potty.

How do I know? Because I’m the one they write to. (I’m also the

one to whom they write, but that’s a subject for another column.)

Welcome to the first installment of what I hope will be a

recurring feature, “Reader Peeves.”

Since I first started writing this column in June, I’ve received

dozens of e-mails and letters from people lamenting abuses of the

language. People such as Bette Flick of Costa Mesa, who wrote back in

June: “One of the most frequent errors is confusion about

affect/effect.”

As Flick pointed out, “affect” is a verb and “effect” is usually a

noun. The way I remember this is to think of “side effects.” Because

“side” ends with the letter “e,” I remember that the next word should

start with “e.” (Lame, I know, but give me a break. It works for me.)

These two words get tricky, though, in the rare cases when

“effect” is a verb, specifically a transitive verb, meaning it

requires an object. That object is almost always “change,” as in “to

effect change.” A way to remember this one is “to effect change,

change the usual rule.”

Another reader, who described himself as “outrageously handsome

(just ask my mom),” mentioned coming across countless English

abominations in online personal ads. (I’m omitting Hunky Joe’s name

on the assumption that he wouldn’t want all this attributed to him.)

“We find the free substitution of ‘their’ for ‘there,’ ‘your’ for

‘you’re,’ and so forth . This generation believes that correct

spelling is all that is required, and proper grammar is taking a

pounding not seen since the days of Dizzy Dean broadcasting baseball

games.”

A lot of people feel this way, though not all are as handsome.

Here’s a reader who caught a nice bit of irony in the edition of

the Pilot that carried my inaugural column.

“It was a chuckle reading the first column yesterday seconds after

reading the adjacent article wherein one paragraph (the lead, no

less) the writer awkwardly if not incorrectly converted the Newport

Beach City Council from the pronoun ‘it’ to the pronoun ‘they,’”

Garry Short wrote.

I don’t know whether Short was going out of his way to be nice,

but he charitably omitted the name of that writer: June Casagrande.

That’s a mistake I make a lot, despite our copy editors’ repeated

efforts to remind me that a council is an “it” even though council

members are referred to as “they.”

A lot of people have been able to cite Pilot errors as examples.

Looking back through these e-mails, I find myself wincing because

these people are right.

“I suppose the main mistakes we see in the Pilot are the sayings

that the writers just don’t ‘get’ or haven’t ever seen in print. So

they get them wrong -- as in: ‘ringing her neck.’ (instead of

wringing) That has been in the Pilot twice in the last month,” wrote

Kay and Phil Salisbury. “Also things like ‘a long road to hoe’

instead of ‘row to hoe.’ (It’s a farming term.) Or ‘doggy dog’

instead of ‘dog eat dog.’”

Ouch.

Now do you care that people care?

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at

june.casagrande@latimes.com.