“Convince, rebuke, exhort….” (2 Timothy 4:2).
“Winston Churchill’s wife told him that loosing the election may turn out to be the best thing that could have happened.”
That statement from an online preacher’s magazine set off my inner alarm. The proper word is not “loosing,” but “losing.”
As an old high school English teacher, I know a little about these things. And I know that these things matter. (That is not to say I don’t slip up occasionally. I definitely do.
However….
A couple of days ago, someone wrote to Smiley Anders’ column in our paper to bemoan the wrong placement of the word “only” in conversation and print. Someone may say, “There were five boys, but I only gave quarters to two of them.” See the problem? “Only” belongs before “two of them.” It should say, “There were five boys but I gave quarters to only two of them.”
Two days later, Smiley says the language maven wrote a followup note to say that the very day her gripe ran in his column, the editorial cartoon violated the “only rule,” with that word in the wrong place.
And I’m thinking, “Get over this, lady. If you go through life correcting everyone’s English, you have taken on a thankless job and unachievable task.”
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