Peevish
I have pet peeves.* I don't think that I have more than the average person, but I could be wrong. After all, I'm slightly neurotic and have a type A personality, so I probably do. So scratch that above sentiment. Anyways, here's one that I discovered whilst my latest useless email pogrom.
Receiving mass emails from an unnamed source who doesn't understand the concept of quotation marks.
For Example: "There is a "blue" toyota corolla in the L lot with its "lights" on."
This sentence reads as if blue or lights were excerpts of someone else's inaccurate speech: the car is actually red and it's not the lights being on but the sunroof being open that is the problem. It's infuriating, right?
Now imagine getting an email that is at least 44k with this information, because the person chose a cloudy-sky background for the html version of his/her message. Like having an overly large vehicle for your purposes and therefore using up more than your fair share of gas, using the stationary version of Outlook email is inconsiderately using up too much inbox space for a 1-line message with inaccurate punctuation. This is not an ecard. No one feels sunshinier because your message is on fluffy little clouds. It would make me happier if you could open up a Strunk and White and learn a little about our good friend Mr. "Quotie." I'm sure he hates your graven idol use of his image.
Now you're thinking "Jeez, Julia, just delete the message and move on with your life. It's not worth this much thought." And I want you people to know that a) all this thought occurs in about 2 seconds and b) I have edited enough of other people's writing in my years as a hs newspaper editor and english major with obsessive friends that I find blatant bad grammar mortally offensive. You have your morals and god/s, I have mine.
Also, it seems to me that this usage started as a pretension or attempt at sophistication. Someone just writing what they were thinking in simple clear english would not use unnecessary quotes. It's like Marilyn Monroe in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" when someone asks her something and she responds "I?" when it is really better to say "Me?" but it sounds more fancy to use "I." But as GPB is a movie, and therefore supposed to be funny, whereas the mass emails are to a large group of highly educated people and therefore just stupidly pretentious, the funny, it just ain't there.
So if this is you, just stop it. You're a lovely person, but your quotes are pushing me closer to insanity. And not in that good way.
* In fifth grade, my teacher (Mr. Miller) asked us to write a little essay on our pet peeves and 90% of the class turned in a paper about things their pets did. I didn't have a pet, so I had asked my mum what I could write about and she explained the concept of pet peeves, so I was in the 10% that wrote about something that bugged us, but I always remember that as a time when I felt smug when I really shouldn't have. (The reason I know about everyone else's mistake is that we read our papers out loud.)
Receiving mass emails from an unnamed source who doesn't understand the concept of quotation marks.
For Example: "There is a "blue" toyota corolla in the L lot with its "lights" on."
This sentence reads as if blue or lights were excerpts of someone else's inaccurate speech: the car is actually red and it's not the lights being on but the sunroof being open that is the problem. It's infuriating, right?
Now imagine getting an email that is at least 44k with this information, because the person chose a cloudy-sky background for the html version of his/her message. Like having an overly large vehicle for your purposes and therefore using up more than your fair share of gas, using the stationary version of Outlook email is inconsiderately using up too much inbox space for a 1-line message with inaccurate punctuation. This is not an ecard. No one feels sunshinier because your message is on fluffy little clouds. It would make me happier if you could open up a Strunk and White and learn a little about our good friend Mr. "Quotie." I'm sure he hates your graven idol use of his image.
Now you're thinking "Jeez, Julia, just delete the message and move on with your life. It's not worth this much thought." And I want you people to know that a) all this thought occurs in about 2 seconds and b) I have edited enough of other people's writing in my years as a hs newspaper editor and english major with obsessive friends that I find blatant bad grammar mortally offensive. You have your morals and god/s, I have mine.
Also, it seems to me that this usage started as a pretension or attempt at sophistication. Someone just writing what they were thinking in simple clear english would not use unnecessary quotes. It's like Marilyn Monroe in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" when someone asks her something and she responds "I?" when it is really better to say "Me?" but it sounds more fancy to use "I." But as GPB is a movie, and therefore supposed to be funny, whereas the mass emails are to a large group of highly educated people and therefore just stupidly pretentious, the funny, it just ain't there.
So if this is you, just stop it. You're a lovely person, but your quotes are pushing me closer to insanity. And not in that good way.
* In fifth grade, my teacher (Mr. Miller) asked us to write a little essay on our pet peeves and 90% of the class turned in a paper about things their pets did. I didn't have a pet, so I had asked my mum what I could write about and she explained the concept of pet peeves, so I was in the 10% that wrote about something that bugged us, but I always remember that as a time when I felt smug when I really shouldn't have. (The reason I know about everyone else's mistake is that we read our papers out loud.)
posted by julia at
5:28 PM
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