Common Mistakes in English
Years ago I had a favourite website of common mistakes in English, and then I lost it. I could remember that it had a characteristic pencil on every page and was one of those “old school”, unstyled, academic sites.
Well, today I found it again.
Here’s what it looked like in 2008: wsu.edu/~brians on archive.org
…and today: brians.wsu.edu.
I’m happy to have found it again, although I think I’m less of a nitpicker than I was 12 years ago. It’s not nice to correct the grammar of regular people in regular conversation… the rules are probably best used when editing formal writing and in the rare opportunity to “punch upwards”. Aaron Sorkin, for example, frequently has characters (some of whom are world-class writers) misuse “bring”/”take” and the phrase “I couldn’t care less”. At those times, I like to shout at the TV.