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[Critical Thinking; Basic]

Part 1: All of the sentences below are prescriptively “wrong” according to many so-called language experts. Can you identify what’s supposed to be wrong with them (i.e., what prescriptive rule do they violate?). If you’re not familiar with prescriptive rules you may have to search around on the Web a bit to figure this out, but if you’ve been trained to write in the American or British University tradition, most (or many) of these should stand out as “poor grammar” or “poor style”. Certainly, Microsoft Word’s grammar- checking program is flagging many of these sentences as I write them!

1 What did you put the present in?

2 She’s smarter than him.

3 To boldly go where no one has gone before!

4 He walks too slow.

5 Hopefully, the weather will turn sunny soon.

6 I found out something which will disturb you greatly.

7 Who did you see?

8 I can’t hardly sleep.

9 10 items or less [a sign above a register in the grocery store]

10 My view of grammar is different than yours.

11 I will not enjoy it.

12 If I was a linguist, then I wouldn’t have to study prescriptive rules.

13 The homework wasn’t done completely.

14 All of the linguists at the conference congratulated each other.

15 Me and John are going to the movies later.

16 I want to learn a new language like French.

Part 2: Consider each of the sentences above and evaluate whether or not they are really unacceptable for you. Try to ignore what you were taught in school was right and focus instead on whether you might actually utter one of these sentences, or if you’d actually blink if you heard one of them produced by someone else. Listen to your inner voice rather than relying on what you have learned is “correct”.